Broadcast Engineering reports that it was online social networks that first spread the word of the military action that killed the terrorist who masterminded 9/11, Osama bin Laden.
Users of Twitter and Facebook were the first to hear of bin Laden’s demise through unconfirmed reports 20 minutes before major broadcast networks reported the news at 10.45pm in the US.
Twitter saw the highest sustained rate of tweets ever on the night of 1 May, due to all the tweets circulating about bin Laden. The average was 3,440 per second from 10.45 pm to 12.30am EDT. More than five million references to bin Laden appeared on Facebook in the US alone.
