When the news of Osama bin Laden's death broke Sunday night, people found out about is from an array of different mediums. According to an Associated Press report, one soldier overseas in Afghanistan heard the news via Facebook and a TV producer learned of the news from comedian Kathy Griffin's Twitter. Others found out from newspaper email notifications or even on a smart phone away from home. To contrast, when news of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks began to spread, it wasn't nearly as fast; these sources were not even options at the time. As an individual who was on Twitter myself at the time that it was announced President Obama would be speaking on an "unannounced" topic (and then a National Security topic and then eventually speculation and confirmation that he would be announcing bin Laden's death) it was phenomenal to suddenly see all the meaningless, trivial tweets taken over by the whole Twitter community responding to this new issue.
The story broke on Twitter and was carried through Twitter and ultimately analyzed on Twitter. Through Twitter does not actually have stories on its site - it instead links you to the full text - the 140-character cap is sufficient to break news. Keith Urbahn, chief of staff to Defense Sec. Robert Gates, is responsible for posting the tweet that led to the speculations and ultimately (though unintentionally, broke the story). The reactions via Twitter kept pouring in over night and throughout Monday and beyond. Subscribers could read comments from politicians, comedians, celebrities, "regular" people, journalists, news sources, and more - even the "President" himself (well, his office). The response on Facebook was very similar. Experiencing this breaking news via these social sites was quite exciting and unlike anything I've been a part of before.
Information for this post also came from a report by The Washington Post and Entertainment Weekly.
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