Bin Laden's Death Proves Social Media as a Global News Source

In the modern world, anyone with a phone or a laptop and an Internet connection can be a journalist. The first on-the-ground testimony of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden came from an IT consultant in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Twitter broke the story of the attack long before the president's announcement- and before any major news outlet.

Sysomos reports that the first tweets about bin Laden's death hit at around 10:30 PM EST. The first news stories hit fifteen to twenty minutes later, and Obama's announcement wasn't until 11:30. The Internet was the first place with the scoop, and coverage has soared every hour since the raid.

As of this morning, we've seen some 40,000 blog and news mentions and 2.2 million tweets from all around the world. Those numbers are impressive, but total traffic generated by the event isn't exactly historic in size. What is worth noting here is the degree to which this story was birthed and shaped by the Internet.

Bin Laden picked one of the world's more isolated spots to hide in. His building itself had no phone lines or Internet connection and the the small town in Northern Pakistan it occurred in isn't the sort of place one generally finds journalists. Yet we have on-the-ground coverage of the attack that was made public the instant it happened.

This seems fairly unprecedented in the history of the Internet so far. We've seen stories broken by the Internet, and we're used to getting tweets out of events that happen in major population centers. The value of that information is marginal and supplemental at best, because those areas also tend to have reliable news coverage. What we have here is a major story exposed to the world by a layman doing nothing more than reporting on the world outside his window. Because his first reaction to something strange was to leap on twitter, Sohaib Athar now has a place in history.

We're past the day when major world events could unfold without the world having a chance to watch. Osama bin Laden wasn't outside Twitter's reach, and we're fast approaching the day when no one will be.

Update:
Athar's blog got hacked. Malware got installed according to Gawker. Check your computer if you have visited his blog.

Updates

Raid admiral's toughest fight: winning Washington

Source: San Diego Local News 1

A group of Lebanese Shiites who were kidnapped in Syria were released in good health Friday, three days after gunmen abducted the men as they returned from a religious pilgrimage, officials said. President Bashar Assad's forces killed at least 50 civilia ...
Full article at: San Diego Local News 1  More like this  14 minutes ago

Obama declares himself a 'master tweeter' [Video]

Source: Los Angeles Times

President Obama, most famous for his soaring speeches, apparently has a knack for the pithy tweet, too. "I'm the master tweeter!" he declares in newly released video of a Twitter Q-and-A session that he participated in Thursday (watch ...
Full article at: Los Angeles Times  More like this  32 minutes ago

US senators vote to cut aid over jail term of Pakistani doctor

Source: Today Online

WASHINGTON - United States senators, scandalised by Pakistan's jailing of a doctor for helping the CIA track down Osama bin Laden, voted on Thursday to cut aid to Islamabad by US$33 million (S$42.2 million) - one million for each year in the do ...
Full article at: Today Online  More like this  48 minutes ago

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