With the announcement late last night that Osama bin Laden had been killed, today reminds me of one aspect of how I felt immediately after 9/11. Much as it was in the days following 9/11, just about all of us have a shared consciousness of a global news event. All of us at least know the topic that we’ve all thought about sometime during the past twelve or so hours. The news is so big that it’s like we can read a small part of each other’s minds.
I imagine this will be one of those “Where were you?” moments with each of us remembering where we were and how we heard about the news. In addition, much has been made of the role that Facebook and Twitter have had in spreading the news of Bin Laden’s death. Here’s a roundup of some posts I’ve seen so far today:
- TechCrunch – First Credible Reports of Bin Laden’s Death Spread Like Wildfire On Twitter – Keith Urbahn, Chief of Staff for former Defense Secretary Donald Rumfeld, appears to have tweeted the first credible announcement that Bin Laden had been killed.
- TechCrunch – @ReallyVirtual Live-tweeted the Raid on Bin Laden – How one man in Abbottabad, Pakistan live-tweeted the raid without knowing it.
- Gigaom – The 7 Stages of News in a Twitter and Facebook Era – An early analysis of the what, how and why of information sharing via the big two social networks.
- Gigaom – Osama Bin Laden and the New Ecosystem of News – Relates how traditional and new news media are related and how they interact.
In the meantime, I’ve been compiling a list of big news events each month this year. The Middle East revolutions, the earthquake in Japan and last week’s storms in the American South are just a few of the stories that have stood out. This story will obviously be added to my list. I look forward to publishing it at the end of this year.
