Bin Laden's death on Twitter

In one of the busiest weekends for social media in history, the death of Osama Bin Laden generated the highest rate of sustained tweets ever recorded.

Twitter was already buzzing with the news of Bin Laden's death before US president Barack Obama even made the announcement.

Twitter initially released statistics showing that more than 4 000 tweets were sent per second during the start and finish of Obama's speech. Revised stats, however, report that the actual number of tweets was about 25% higher.

Just before Obama gave his public address, users were generating 5 106 tweets per second. After the speech, tweets were being sent at a rate of 5 008 per second. Twitter peaked at an average of 12 384 000 tweets per hour on Monday.

The record for the most tweets sent in the same second is still 6 939, recorded during the New Year celebrations in Japan.

Twitter is a service that wasn't even in existence when the decade-long manhunt for Bin Laden began, yet became the primary resource for finding and disseminating the news.

One Twitter user unwittingly live-tweeted the raid on the compound in which Bin Laden was killed. Sohaid Athar (@ReallyVirtual), who lives in Abbottabad, tweeted about hearing helicopters overhead at 1am. He also tweeted that one of the four helicopters involved in the raid had crashed.

As soon as news of Bin Laden's death broke, Athar realised the enormity of what he had tweeted, saying: “Uh oh, now I'm the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it.”

In a Mashable poll of 20 000 online readers, 31% found out about the death of Bin Laden via Twitter, and 20% picked it up via Facebook.

Over 442 000 people have already “liked” the “Osama Bin Laden is Dead” page on Facebook. News sites recorded four million page views per minute, pushing traffic up by 24% globally.

Twitter managed to cope with the influx of tweets, and avoided the infamous “Fail Whale”. CNN's mobile site, however, reportedly crashed under the strain.

Some Twitter feeds have also been going viral, especially those that look at the lighter side of the news event.

The self-proclaimed “ghost” of Bin Laden (tweeting as @GhostOsama) appeared on the service less than an hour after the terrorist's death was confirmed, with the tweet: “Well this sucks... I accidentally enabled location on my tweets.”

Even @Jesus used the opportunity to take a knock at Bin Laden, tweeting: “Sorry, you're at the wrong gate, Osama.”