Twitter frenzy follows Osama bin Laden killing

Twitter has announced that news of Osama bin Laden's killing triggered an unprecedented lasting wave of messages at the microblogging service.

AFP | May 3, 2011



Twitter has announced that news of Osama bin Laden's killing triggered an unprecedented lasting wave of messages at the microblogging service.

The San Francisco-based site released updated figures from the messaging frenzy, which crested at 5,000 "tweets-per-second" at times during a surge that lasted slightly more than four hours.

"Last night saw the highest sustained rate of Tweets ever," Twitter said yesterday.

There was an average of 3,000 tweets-per-second from 0245 GMT to 0620 GMT yesterday, according to Twitter.

Word of bin Laden's death rocketed through the Internet in rapid-fire Twitter messages, Facebook updates, and YouTube video clips.

The barrage of tweets was among the highest message-sending outbursts at Twitter, which handled a record high number of 6,939 tweets-per-second when New Year's Eve 2010 arrived in Japan.

Messages tagged with "#osama" and "obl" quickly jumped to the top two spots in a list of the hottest topics at the global microblogging service.

News that US military forces killed the 9/11 mastermind was apparently first leaked at Twitter in a public message sent by Keith Urbahn, chief of staff for former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

"So I'm told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden," read a tweet sent by Urbahn about an hour before president Obama announced the killing. "Hot damn."

An IT consultant in the Pakistan city of Abbottabad, who tweets under the name "ReallyVirtual," appeared to have unknowingly delivered a real-time account of the attack that killed bin Laden.

Sohaib Athar began tweeting messages about one in the morning local time complaining about helicopters hovering and than a window-rattling blast.

His series of messages at Twitter told of a helicopter crash, a family dying, and Pakistani military swarming the area.

"I am just a tweeter, awake at the time of the crash," he said in a Twitter message at 06:30 GMT on Monday.

"Uh oh, now I'm the guy who live-blogged the Osama raid without knowing it," he tweeted after connecting president Obama's announcement to what was taking place in his neighbourhood.

By Monday afternoon in California more than 367,000 people had "liked" an "Osama bin Laden is Dead" page at social networking service Facebook.
 

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