Osama bin Laden Social Media Reaction

With the recent death of Osama bin Laden, we saw just how integrated users of Social Media really are. For instance, 10 years ago when the tragedy of 9/11 occurred, Social Media was, for the most part, nonexistent. Now nearly 10 years later, Social Media has played a major role as a primary medium for news information. Not only was it a source for people to learn about bin Laden’s death but it was also a venue to share the news while reacting to it in real time.

How did you hear about the death of Osama Bin Laden?

I heard the news while I was on Facebook. A local news agency had posted a message saying, “Washington (AP) - White House says Obama to make a late-night statement Sunday; subject not announced.” (KRDO News Channel 13 Facebook Feed) After I read the message I went to multiple national news agencies websites only to find error messages and unable to access the websites. I then turned on the television and was able to hear the news of Osama Bin Laden’s death.

I always knew Social Media was going to play a major role in modern American society, but after coming across these statistics, I was completely blown away! These results were from a 24-hour time period from the evening of May 1st to the evening of May 2nd.

• News Sites a the peak of the breaking news saw 4 million page views per minute.
• Twitter had 12.4 million tweets per hour.
• 13,000 videos were uploaded to YouTube.
• “Bin Laden” search queries were up 98,550% on Yahoo.
• The Facebook Page, “Osama bin Laden Is Dead” received 442,000 “likes” in one night.
• The White House released a photo on Flickr of security staffers watching the reports as they came in, that photo saw 600,000 views in the first hour and 13,000 views per minute afterwards.

(Source: Mashable)

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