It was just another Sunday night, checking my personal social networks before heading to bed. Then a tweet came up in my stream about Bin Laden. Then a few more. Switched over to Facebook and saw it in my newsfeed, too. Then saw a tweet “Turn on the TV” — so I did, and immediately a breaking news segment interrupted regular programming. Somewhere in there I also tweeted: “who else found out about Bin Laden on social networks first? me. #breaking“.
At 10:46 – Time to turn to Google during this lightbulb! moment – I should screenshot this. My first Google search displayed a number one result indexed from 3 days ago from Huffington Post, but just below that, realtime results started appearing. Also at this time, @replies and re-tweets in response to my tweet were flooding in. Many others saw this new break first on Twitter, too.
Google Search Results Adapting
At around 10:49 – on the first page of results an unconfirmed news story listing appeared referring to his death.
By 10:55 the engines had adapted ranking a TMZ article first (reminiscent of Michael Jackson death results). Another classic shoutout from Google to blogs.
In case you’re interested, I got my Washington Post breaking news email at 11:03 ET.
At 11:23, ABC News began reading tweets and reactions on air. Paraphrased: Social networks are giving people a voice and a platform to instantly discuss important, breaking issues. My sidenote: these social networks are not just for tweeting about our meal choices or our morning coffee. This is how we learn about HUGE, history-book-quality events.
Writing this and learning about his death is one of those snapshot moments of my life I’ll never forget. As a social media gal, I’ll also never forget how I found out, either. Pause to think about how you found out about 9/11. I’m betting it was by phone or TV.
One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. 5.1.11. _____________ Complete Mashable’s poll “How did you hear about Osama Bin Laden’s Death” and let’s see what the results look like.
