At approximately 11:35 p.m. on Sunday, President Obama addressed the nation to announce that Osama bin Laden was killed in a firefight in Abbottabad, Pakistan carried out by US operatives.

Obama’s announcement was more of a confirmation to millions of Twitter and Facebook users around the world who were informed about the Al Qaeda leader’s death through social media platforms.

Twitter and Facebook streams were filled with statuses and comments repeating the news that bin Laden was dead and allegedly served as the initial outlet of the news about the death.

Response on Twitter began after Keith Urbahn, chief of staff for former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld tweeted, “So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn,” at around 9:30 p.m. He quickly followed up with a tweet saying he didn’t know if it was misinformation or pure rumor and that confirmation from the president was needed.

But the world took notice and traditional news outlets followed suit with reports of bin Laden’s death by interrupting television broadcast, updating their websites, and posting to their Twitter accounts.

“The story started to leak out in the public domain largely when some Congressional staffers started to make phone calls,” NBC’s Brian Williams said in his broadcast.

At 9:45 p.m., Dan Pfeiffer, the White House Communication Director, tweeted “POTUS to address the nation tonight at 10:30 p.m. Eastern Time,” a message that was shared with White House press corps. The president had not spoken by that time but news outlets like CNN, New York Times, and CBS among others confirmed Osama’s death by 10:40 p.m. According the New York Times, the Associated Press said that government officials speaking to media were remaining anonymous “in order to speak ahead of the president.”

Soon enough, #osama, #obl, Navy Seals, Abbottabad, Watching CNN and Mission Accomplished were all trending topics worldwide on Twitter. According to the New York Times, Twitter reported 4,000 tweets per second during Obama’s address to the nation, but those numbers were “incomplete.”

On Monday, Twitter announced that “from 10:45 p.m.-2:20 a.m. ET, there was an average of 3,000 Tweets per second.” The number surpassed 5,000 at 11 p.m. and remained that way past the president’s remarks.
Courtney Jensen, a junior at the University of Texas at Austin, was studying in the Flawn Academic Center when she saw the news of Osama’s death on Twitter. News sites tweeted the link to watch the president’s announcement as the students in the FAC compared what their Facebook and Twitter feeds.

“Everyone around me was watching the address on a computer,” she said. “People were gathered around each other’s screens and many didn’t have their headphones in but no one was bothered because we were all watching it anyway.”

Twitter has become a staple on dissemination of information and citizen reporting in past years. The website was witness to some of the first reports and photographs of the US Airways commercial jet crash landing in the Hudson River and the fatal shooting at Fort Hood.

After the president’s address, Twitter continued to be updated with follow ups by news sites, transcripts of the president’s address, and individuals posting pictures of the crowds that gathered all around the nation to celebrate Osama’s death- a true testament to the impact of the Internet on today’s news spread of information.