If you haven’t heard by now, a military operation by the US has finally killed Osama Bin Laden. At 10:40 EST, we were all notified that President Barak Obama was to speak, but did not give a reason why. So what did we do? We went to the Internet – mainly, Twitter.
Now with the body retrieved and the President making the official announcement, Twitter has been on fire. First of all people questioning what the announcement was, then an all-too-clear answer. Bin Laden had died or been killed.
Finally, the word was official. But not before people made a couple jokes…
This shows you that if we have breaking news, the best way to find out what is going on… Twitter. You might also say Facebook, but in this case, I started seeing Facebook posts about 15-20 minutes after Twitter exploded.
There are a lot of Tweets taking over the social network. People saying “America F*ck Yeah!“, others are emotional.
As I was watching Twitter blow up tonight, I have to think what Twitter would have been like if it was around on September 11, 2001. I had to wonder how Social Networking could have played a part back then – since it plays such a big part with us now.
We did have SMS texting in 2001, but not that many were using it (I think I had the Nokia 8110 at that time). Still, the second I heard the tower was going down (was in a car with 3 other people headed to Green Bay, WI for a Windows NT upgrade), we were all on our cell phones. We were either talking to family or talking with the office to see if we should turn around and come home.
Now, it’s on our smartphones through Twitter blowing up the social network. Of course it does help that it’s a Sunday night where we are all just relaxing on the couch watching Celebrity Apprentice.
Alas, I still don’t know if NeNe or Star Jones was fired yet…
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Just goes to show how socialy relevent Twitter is these days.