Bin Laden's Death Causes Twitter Record 167
gabbo529 writes "Twitter has been a source of breaking news since its inception five years ago, and the social network was used at a high rate last night with the death of Osama Bin Laden. [Sunday night] saw the highest sustained rate of Tweets ever. From 10:45 p.m. to 2:20 a.m. ET, there was an average of 3,000 Tweets per second."
First joke I saw tweeted. (Score:5, Funny)
A joke only UK readers will get:
Who says you can't take a Bin out on a bank holiday.
Brum tish!
Re:First joke I saw tweeted. (Score:5, Funny)
My favourite was the commented posted (I think first on Reddit, but then circulated on Twitter) "At least they let him see the Royal Wedding".
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I think I read it on
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Re:First joke I saw tweeted. (Score:4, Insightful)
Clearly they have not seen Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
Great, they got to shoot Osama Bin Laden and they never saw that movie. Now I have two reasons to be envious.
Not twitter, but first comment I saw on 4chan... (Score:4, Funny)
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Osama bin Laden hears the doorbell ring. He answers it and there are Navy SEALS at the door. "Great," he says, "I need this like I need a hole in the head."
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I guess it was a retweet I saw.(*) Apparently a zillion other people said things like this, but I thought it was funny.
@AmandaStratton
The girl married her Prince. The bad guy is dead. It's a real Disney weekend here on Earth.
(*) Is there no way to easily search just for people I'm following? Why is there no "I am following" checkbox on the advanced search? How do you even GET to the advanced search (if you don't already have a bookmark) without doing a search first THEN clicking on advanced search?
Sneaky... (Score:2)
Then I realized that we were talking about Twitter.
Wasn't Jackson the last big one? (Score:2)
So the question I have now is, was Michael Jackson less significant or did the Jackson craze lead to more people knowing about Twitter and thus more people available to tweet about Bid Laden? The world may never know.
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So the question I have now is, was Michael Jackson less significant
He only buggered a handful of kids.
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Room on the island? (Score:2)
Well, Bin Laden had taken over Hitler's spot of "Evilest Guy Alive" for quite a few years. It's no wonder his death is much discussed.
As someone whose persona was so large, and whose death was always going to be controversial, I guess that means he joins Hitler, Elvis, and Michael Jackson on the island of dead people who are regularly sighted.
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Bin Laden wasn't evilest guy alive; I'd say maybe Kim Jong Il holds that position. There're plenty of dictators with more blood on their hands than bin Laden. Bin Laden might not even break the top 10 in terms of death toll.
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top 10?
He is way lower than that. Basically every leader of a nation that has gone to war has a higher death toll, from ancient times on. Heck many single indiviuals beat out bin Laden and all his followers combined, Kermit Beahan and Thomas Ferebee both win that contest by at least an order of magnitude but I wouldn't call them evil.
it's a stupid metric.
Someone who murders 2 people is more evil than someone who rapes and tortures (but doesn't kill) 10,000?
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Well, it's a draw between Kim Jong Il, Bin Laden, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc on the "Number of sharks with lasers" stat.
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I suggest we quantify evil through the number of successful vendor lock-ins and patent litigations.
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I'll bet every president since WW1 has caused more death than Bin Laden.
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http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ [iraqbodycount.org]
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Although I am glad that this very evil person is no longer with us, I am not going to "celebrate", as my mind and heart is still with the victims and their families. For them, nothing is going to bring back their loss. The death of a man who either directly caused their death, or helped spawn the ideology that caused others to kill, represents a shallow victory.
This man caused the deaths of many, and instigated a sense of fear that today still affects millions accross the world in security, and other issues
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I will be tweeting and celebrating only when the tide of intolerance, and evil fanaticism is eradicated totally, and myself and my family can look forward to living free in a world where we do not have to fear that a person is plotting to kill me, just because my views of life and liberty is different to theirs.
That's not why they want to kill you, they want to kill you because you do not believe in the same religion they do.
To be more precise, they want to kill everyone who does not believe as fervently as they do in the same interpretation of their religion.
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I will be tweeting and celebrating only when the tide of intolerance, and evil fanaticism is eradicated totally, and myself and my family can look forward to living free in a world where we do not have to fear that a person is plotting to kill me, just because my views of life and liberty is different to theirs.
That's not why they want to kill you, they want to kill you because you do not believe in the same religion they do.
To be more precise, they want to kill everyone who does not believe as fervently as they do in the same interpretation of their religion.
Yeah, that's why the struck the WTC and Pentagon instead of the Vatican and other bastions of religion.
[citation provided] (Score:2)
To be more precise, they want to kill everyone who does not believe as fervently as they do in the same interpretation of their religion.
Citation needed.
OK, here it is [lawrencewright.com].
Sometimes you need to read a bit more than the huffpost in order to broaden your point of view. That "western support for the dictators who run governments in the middle east" line is a bit tired, don't you think? Could you ([citation needed], of course) point out which "western" governments support the dictatorships of Syria, Iran, and Gaza?
It's truly ironic how someone can talk about "gross oversimplification" in the same sentence they talk about "western support" for dictatorships.
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I will be tweeting and celebrating only when the tide of intolerance, and evil fanaticism is eradicated totally, and myself and my family can look forward to living free in a world where we do not have to fear that a person is plotting to kill me, just because my views of life and liberty is different to theirs.
Good luck with that.
Re:Room on the island? (Score:4, Insightful)
This man caused the deaths of many, and instigated a sense of fear that today still affects millions accross the world in security, and other issues.
I cannot honestly say how much Bin Laden himself actually contributed to any loss of lives, but I can definitely say that any sense of fear along with that tide of intolerance was and is instigated not by some lone raving looney and his YouTube channel but by politicians on all sides of the fence. Osama Bin Laden has never posed any tangible threat to me. That puts him in stark contrast to the supranational police state that has been brought on us since 9/11.
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I always hoped that Bin Laden would end up choking to death on a handful of chili nuts just outside a Walmart (where he just purchased the aforementioned nuts), dressed in a pair of surf shorts and a mickey mouse t-shirt of course. That would've stirred up some very interesting controversy, bonus points if he had been using his real ID the whole time...
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I had also hoped he would choke on his own nuts, but not in quite the same way you envisioned.
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Does that mean it's okay to dress as Bin Laden for Halloween this year?
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Does that mean it's okay to dress as Bin Laden for Halloween this year?
Depends on how many gun-toting idiots don't think he's really dead.
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Bin Laden is only responsible for the deaths of around 3000 Americans. George W Bush is responsible for the deaths of over 3000 [antiwar.com] Americans, and over 100,000 civilians.
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add the US constitution to that list
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I don't like to confuse Bush's idiotic wars with Bin Laden's criminality.
Bush was a fool who wasted blood and treasure, as they like to say.
September 11th was a massive crime and it is a huge relief to see justice done. I'd have preferred an arrest & trial but what's happened will have to do.
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Why? What's the significant difference?
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Sorry, the above post ("I don't like to confuse the two...") is mine, I just wasn't signed in at the time of posting.
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60% of U.S. Military Deaths in Afghanistan Have Occurred Since Obama Was Inaugurated in 2009.
Funny thing about reporting, it says as much as what is reported, as what is excluded by reports. AntiWar is just Anti (R) war, not the current (D) wars, including the new one in Libya.
http://icasualties.org/OEF/index.aspx [icasualties.org]
At the current rate of increasing deaths in Afghanistan, Obama will surpass GWB by the time the 2012 elections come and he is either re-elected or we have President Trump (or worse, Palin). Stop re
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Because bin Laden killed thousands of Americans, whereas Hitler only killed a few million Jews?
(Ignoring that Hitler lost the Evilest Guy Alive position eight years before Osama bin Laden was born.)
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Interestingly enough, there are plenty of conspiracy theories that say Hitler didn't die in that bunker. That he slipped the Russians grasp and ran off to Argentina or Brazil to live out a long life.
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It's weird that you seem to have someone watching what you type and providing realtime feedback. Is that like an AI, or just a really bored, well-informed homeless person?
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I thought it was Bert.
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I didn't say I agreed with the label... just that if you stop the average Joe on the street and say "Hey, who's an evil guy?" Bin Laden would get a high score...
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Well the question is the definition of evil. Obviously Bin Laden's followers didn't think he was evil and I am sure Eva Braun didn't think Hitler was evil. It's all about perspective. They both may be deranged and misguided but were they evil if they truly believed they were doing the right thing for their people?
You have to remember the circumstances that gave rise to Hitler coming to power. The allies after WWI literally destroyed Germany economically for a war that wasn't really even their fault. Th
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If Hitler had been shot in 1937 he'd probably be remembered as one of the great statesmen of the 20th century.
He brought in a lot of very successful and very popular social programs.
He wasn't just popular for being charismatic.
If it wasn't for the genocide he would have had a very different place in the history books.
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I don't doubt that. I've often said that if Hitler had embraced the Jewish people he would most likely have been the first to have the atomic bomb and we'd all be eating schnitzel.
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You can apply a similar trick to just about any ne'er do well from history:
Pablo Escobar comes to mind. If he hadn't killed so many people he would've been remembered as a great philanthropist and humanitarian for all the great things he did for his countrymen.
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I've heard that 1937 line before, but many of his progressive achievements came after that. He hadn't done all that much by 37.
His problem (stateman-wise) was that he ran out of other people's money quickly. His early moves against the Jews were focused on the state stealing money to keep his programs going - pogroms for programs, so to speak. Of course, making the Jews ineligible for all the social programs gave him another year as well. His social programs led directly to his place in the history book
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It's possible to be both evil and delusional.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_Banner_of_Heaven [wikipedia.org]
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"Wrong" is subjective in the first place.
horribly wrong
Whether something is "horribly wrong" or not depends on your perspective.
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Hitler was not really that bad, provided you have anti-semitic beliefs (which seems to be a really no-no these days, what could be the source of this stigma ? I mean, it seems to be ok to hate other people of arabic (jews are arabs with different religion) descent, and they are just trying to get by, not accruing unwarranted wealth and manipulating the masses).
By that reasoning, nobody is ever evil because there's always some nutcase who thinks he's okay.
By the way, Jews aren't Arabs. They're both Semites, however.
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Well, Bin Laden had taken over Hitler's spot of "Evilest Guy Alive" for quite a few years
I'd hope so, since Adolf hasn't been alive since 1945.
I was pretty annoyed that Time Magazine wimped out on naming bin Laden as Man of the Year in 2001. The criterion are supposed to be:
Since 1927, TIME Magazine has chosen a man, woman, or idea that "for better or worse, has most influenced events in the preceding year.
And obviously that was Bin Laden. Yet they named Giuliani. Who was a good mayor of a big city (I've heard), and but didn't change the WORLD the way bin Laden did. He set the USA's economy and political influence into a tailspin with one day's work, and got GWB re-elected into the bargain. He triggered the invasion of two n
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Time magazine doesn't even know what "influential" means [bigjournalism.com]
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Well, Bin Laden had taken over Hitler's spot of "Evilest Guy Alive" for quite a few years. It's no wonder his death is much discussed.
As someone whose persona was so large, and whose death was always going to be controversial, I guess that means he joins Hitler, Elvis, and Michael Jackson on the island of dead people who are regularly sighted.
Seriously? Since when was Hitler the "Evilest Guy Alive"? I must have missed something.
You deny he was alive at some point?
Maybe I need to specify that the title has passed through various people between 1945 and 2001. But most of them have been challengers who never became legends...
That's great (Score:2)
if you think the source is reliable and expert enough to really give you news. Given that there was an article on the front page about how people find the news they want, I don't know if Twitter gets around that same problem.
Re:That's great (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think if it's not meeting the criteria you just mentioned, it makes Twitter useless as a news source. That combined with point made by clang_jangle [slashdot.org] point to the fact that this article is polish for a turd.
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I think if it's not meeting the criteria you just mentioned, it makes Twitter useless as a news source.
Not in the slightest. I first read about OBL's death on Twitter. I didn't take that as authoritative information, but it brought the news to my attention so I could learn more about it elsewhere.
Twitter is useless as a news source in exactly the same way Wikipedia is useless as an information source. You don't want to cite either one in a formal article, but both can give you good pointers to primary sources you can pursue further.
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I could tweet that Obama had a major heart attack and Biden is now running things, even though it didn't happen. Are people going to spend time verifying that? If so, how is having to decide if Twitter is delivering legitimate news or not a useful service? If you're getting tweets from Washington Post or a creditable news source, then Twitter isn't doing anything that a smart phone or the tv doesn't already do.
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I could tweet that Obama had a major heart attack and Biden is now running things, even though it didn't happen. Are people going to spend time verifying that?
You usually don't have to because someone else will follow up to real stories with linked articles from more mainstream sources. I went from seeing "Osama is dead!" to "Here's a link to CNN: ..." in about 2 minutes.
If you're getting tweets from Washington Post or a creditable news source, then Twitter isn't doing anything that a smart phone or the tv doesn't already do.
I don't want to check a bunch of news sites or watch TV constantly, for much the same reason that I'd rather chat around the office water cooler than do either of those things. There are other considerations, like the fact that I heard from several friends (none of whom knew each other) about a m
Inconceivable! (Score:5, Funny)
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It took the death of the most hated man alive to finally put an end to the supremacy of Justin Beiber tweets.
Beiber would still be top. The tense would just change from present to past.
Re:Inconceivable! (Score:5, Funny)
It took the death of the most hated man alive
What? Justin Bieber died?
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He said "most hated MAN".
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What? Justin Bieber died?
"The only good Bieber is a dead Bieber.
- MJ"
Re:Inconceivable! (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, but some dumbasses started throwing eggs at Bieber, and Bin Laden was instantly old news.
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Crap... Tried to moderate "insightful", accidentally got "redundant". Undoing...
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Yeah...but it means Justin Beiber takes over as the most hated man alive. Do you really want that...?
(nb. I use the word 'man' in the anthropological sense of the word)
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Yeah...but it means Justin Beiber takes over as the most hated man alive. Do you really want that...?
I dunno, does it mean the US will now spend trillions of dollars ensuring his demise? I'm kind of... yeah, I think I'm good with that. Not thrilled about the timescales if it means we have to put up with him for another decade, mind.
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But Justin Beiber's not dead...
What about here at Slashdot? (Score:2)
There were an amazing amount of comments here in the first thread about Bin Laden's death [slashdot.org]... ~2000? What's the record at /.?
Re:What about here at Slashdot? (Score:4, Interesting)
From the bottom of the page: http://slashdot.org/hof.shtml [slashdot.org]
Looks like a story about Kerry vs. Bush is the current comment champ.
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What's the record at /.?
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I saw quite a few forums roll over and die sunday night, which was an impressive feat. Facebook didn't slow down (for me) but it was impressive nonetheless for what amounted to bedtime for most americans.
I've seen better (Score:3)
Osama Bin Laden may be dead, but without Ewoks & a John Williams music score to celebrate this mighty victory with, it feels kind of empty.
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Osama Bin Laden may be dead, but without Ewoks & a John Williams music score to celebrate this mighty victory with, it feels kind of empty.
Darth Vader died with redemption. OBL just got nailed. Nor orchestra or dancing naked Ewoks are called for.
Doesn't Count Though (Score:2)
In other news... (Score:2)
OBL's death generates 27 tangential Slashdot stories.
correction (Score:2)
The article says 5000 per second by the time Obama finished his speech
Twitter has rarely been a source of breaking news (Score:2)
And the death of bin Laden is no exception. Those 3000 tweets/second are not carrying "breaking news" of any kind; they are people making jokes, political talking-points or simply repeating rumours and hearsay. Even the article states that most of the tweets came after the news appeared on TV.
Fact is, the overwhelming majority of people on twitter have no first-hand experience of the event, and those that do have first-hand experience are not about to leak any details of it. All the good information is coll
And, how much traffic meant *anything*? (Score:2)
Millions of wanna-be reality stars tweeting every banality. Hell, even the so-called live-tweeting was just a resident complaining about chopper noise.
Retracted (Score:2)
I saw this retracted on World News Now this morning. They mentioned another event getting around 5500 tweets/minute. I think it was the Japan quake.
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So you don't know what the word "sustained" means. Congrats.
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What exactly was stopping him before? I mean he regularly put out videos to sources that couldn't easily be controlled by the US Government. If he has some grand secret to release that would hurt the US then why wouldn't he have already used it?
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if past wikileaks leaks hints at much, i'd say not a whole lot.
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You'll be pleased to learn that we're currently on pace to set the record for Slashdot as well. Thanks for your help.
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My services can do 20000 transactions per second, per server, per core. - by Anonymous Coward
That's nothing - I can ignore all ten billion people in the world simultaneously in no time at all.
Go ahead, test me - there's a "Reply to This" button beneath my post.
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What, did hell freeze over?
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My fault, actually - for a while now instead of "when hell freezes over" I've been saying "when they get bin Laden." Please convey my apologies to the rest of the people down there - I wouldn't wish AOL on even my worst enemy.
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What's the matter - short on virgins?