People were alarmed when the death of Osama bin Laden spread across many nations on Sunday night. It was observed that such issue created a blast of internet traffic.
When Osama’s death was publicly announced, the issue reached at its highest point as there were 5,106 tweets posted every second making such to obtain the second-highest tweets throughout the history of Twitter.
Thousands of tweets came out from Sunday to Monday following a confirmation from President Barack Obama. It resulted to an average of 3,000 Tweets per second.
Through Twitter, one will be able to recognize views of the majority as people personally bring information as they exchange opinions concerning the news. It becomes an instrument to disseminate breaking news as well. The death of bin Laden continues to merge discussions on Twitter.
Even before the officials of the White house spoke to the media that Osama bin Laden was killed, the news already spread via Twitter through Keith Urbahn, chief of staff of the former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Urbahn’s tweet says, “So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn.” On the later part, he told the media that he had been tipped off by one of the prestigious news agency.
His tweets were then followed by other news networks including those from the microblogging site that rapidly spread the confirmation in connection to the death of the world’s most wanted person.
However, Keith Urbahn was not the first person to break the news. The first breaking news via Twitter was actually through Sohaib Athar, an IT consultant from Pakistan. He lived in Abbottabad City were Osama bin Laden had been killed. At the moment that the event happened, he unknowingly tweeted his observation right away.
On Sunday at around 5:00 p.m. ET, Athar primarily tweeted the line which says, “A huge window shaking bang here in Abbottabad … I hope its not the start of something nasty.”
The keyword “osama bin laden dead” had been the trending topic that increasingly raised throughout the Google trends.
In fact, the story of bin Laden reached 4.1 million page views per second from various news websites. Most of the internet sites that handles current event were supported and tracked by Akamai, a network which delivers almost 20% of the internet’s content.
Famous news sites such as bbc.com, nytimes.com, reuters.com and usatoday.com have been supported by Akamai.
It appeared that Osama bin Laden’s story climb the highest traffic on Sunday at around 11:30 p.m. following the live television broadcast of President Obama. Almost 2.5 million page views per second have been observed an hour after the said news broke.
On the other hand, it was on June 24, 2010 when the largest peak of internet traffic occurred. Acquiring 10.4 million page views per second, such record was during the World Cup qualifying matches and the longest-ever Wimbledon match that was simultaneously held at the same time.
Moreover, almost 5.4 million page views per second occurred during the royal wedding that placed it on top six on Akamai’s list. The royal wedding however was the second-highest event when speaking about events that are not related to sports. It was ranked next to the U.S. mid-term elections in 2010.
The social media such as Twitter and Facebook played a big role to inform and influence every individual. Online life is common nowadays as people could instantly check the latest news and give reactions in just a few clicks.
The largest peaks from top 1 down to rank 13 all happened from previous year to the present. Internet usages indeed rise continually as online life gradually becomes the people’s habit in this modern world.