Health & Fitness
Bin Laden's Death And Social Media
What if social media existed on 9/11? A look at how social media is changing the way the world consumes news.
May 1 is a day that will go down in world history - Osama bin Laden killed by U.S military forces. bin Laden was the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks.
On May 1 word spread fast on bin Laden's death through various social media channels - facebook, twitter, google. According to Twitter, between the hours of 10:45 p.m. and 2:20 a.m. users were tweeting at a rate of 3,440 tweets per second. A Washington Post/Pew Research poll found that 14% of young people age 18 to 34 heard about bin Laden's death through social networking sites.
Hundreds of hashtags were born instantly - #USA, #godblessAmerica, #binladendead, #ourvoicehasbeenheard.
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Today, social networking sites are being used as a gathering place for the world.
When I first found out about bin Laden's death on Facebook, I could not help but to place myself back to where I was on 9/11. I remember every detail of that day -what I wore, what I ate, and where I was.
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This brings me to my next thought. What if Twitter and these new mediums of communication existed on 9/11? Would they have acted as a powerful medium between families that day?
