I remember that fateful morning of September 11, 2011 when two planes had hit the World Trade Center. I was at work. One of my co-workers was listening to the radio. Instantly, we were intently focused on the silver box (yes, the radio) because the office didn’t have a TV. We listened to the news unfold as it was reported.
Nearly 10 years later, the news of Osama Bin Laden’s death circled the globe within seconds of the official word of his death. The report broke before the President finished his remarks, let alone made it to the podium. It’s being called a media frenzy – a social media frenzy.
Facebook’s Osama Bin Laden is DEAD Facebook page received more than 150,000 “Likes” within 2 hours, nearly 300,000 “Likes” by morning. Surely the number has tripled by the time this blog post has been published. Twitter was abuzz with nearly 4,000 tweets per second during President Obama’s speech. Per second!?
Social media has certainly been linked to its fair share of controversy with inaccurate reports, stories, etc. However in this instance, the sheer power of social media connected global audiences with unprecedented quickness enabling the world to discuss this historic news. Adam Ostrow said it best in a blog post that social media has become a “real-time discussion board.” And to no surprise, we all have a lot to say.
We’ve surpassed viral…and gone global.