How did you learn about Osama bin Laden's death?

Americans celebrate bid Laden's death by Cheryl Nichols

There will be many postmortems written this week about social media's role disseminating news that U.S. special forces killed terrorist Osama bin Laden. For Betanews readers, I'd like to start the process informally, by simply asking how you heard the news. Please answer in comments and take the poll below.

I also think the discussion may be cathartic for some of you. The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that brought down the Twin Towers and destroyed part of the Pentagon were a national trauma. For many people, the death of bin Laden, architect of those attacks, is a moment of national jubilation -- of closure. The spontaneous crowds that gathered on Pennsylvania Ave. outside the White House or Ground Zero in New York overnight show the national euphoria and relief.

I learned about bin Laden's death from my daughter, who said "It's all over Facebook." I had gone offline for the night (there has to be some peace from tech sometimes) to watch "The Killing" on AMC, which I had started recording about 45 minutes earlier. I'm in San Diego, where the program is available 7 p.m., concurrent with its 10 p.m. ET airing. About an hour later, my daughter needed help streaming a movie. While I was helping her, she asked: "Did you know that Osama Bin Laden is dead?"

I had heard news alerts incessantly chirping on my iPad 2 but ignored them. Because I watched a recorded TV program, there was no interruption or news alert. After hearing the news from my daughter, I tuned into CNN just after the President's address to the nation. If I had been working at my laptop, I would have followed the news online. But since I had staked out the television for the night, I watched coverage there. However, I did get on AIM with a journalist friend who was multitasking media -- online, U.S. TV news and, via SlingBox, BBC and SkyNews.

Buzz of bin Laden's death started breaking about an hour before President Obama's speech, which aired around 11:35 p.m ET last night. Keith Urban, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's chief of staff, tweeted: "So I'm told by a reputable person they have killed Osama bin Laden. Hot damn." (Interesting aside: I got to watch Rumsfeld live some years ago. We both appeared on the Robert McNeil News Hour the same night. It was an open studio with different interview areas. I watched his interview while waiting for mine -- something to do with Microsoft.)


How My Facebook Friends Told It

The first post appeared in my Facebook news feed 10:10 p.m. ET, with the poster noting the White House had called for a 10:30 p.m. news conference, which would later be delayed for more than an hour. Because many of my FB friends don't post to "everyone," I won't identify any of them by name. "Obama's making an unexpected late-night statement. What could it be? Qaddafi dead? Asteroid to strike earth in a week? Who knows," a high schooler wrote at 10:12 p.m. At 10:28 p.m., the same person posting about the news conference wrote: "Source says bin Laden has been killed!!!" That would have been about 3 minutes after Urban's tweet. At 10:43 p.m., the high schooler posted: "newyorktimes, fox, nbc = osama dead."

Among my FB friends, chatter started to pick up after that. "Sweet poetic justice that bin Laden was killed on Yom HaShoah, the Jewish holiday of remembering all holocausts! :)," one FB friend claimed. Wrote another: "What a nice weekend...A royal wedding, the historic last flight of the space shuttle program, and an evil terrorist is dead...very nice indeed." Another FB friend linked to a 12:13 a.m. ET story from The Atlantic, which observed about bin Laden's Abbottabad, Pakistan, hideout: "It's unclear who added the hideout to Google Maps or when, but it's already there -- and labeled as an 'amusement park.'"

The high schooler, who has a political blog, posted 11 minutes after announcing bin Laden's death in response to a comment: "In all honesty it was mostly Twitter scouring. I made my first post when the first reputable source leaked on it."

In the final analysis, I expect that Twitter will once again prove to be first breaker of a big news event. But the real action, where people have meaningful discussion that isn't face to face, will take place on Facebook. Hey, Twitter's limitations for meaningful dialogue should be a book or movie title "When 140 characters isn't enough."

So that's the other part of today's question: How will you follow the news today and where will you discuss it? Please answer these questions in comments, too.

It's easy to forget how pervasive social media services like Facebook and Twitter are today, or how recent they are. Both services opened to the public in 2006 -- YouTube in November 2005. Most of the social sharing/connecting services that are widely used today didn't exist five years ago. What was there on September 11, 2001? So much has changed in such a short time.

Please answer the questions in comments and take the poll above. It's a good day for discussion, to put aside fanboy platform fights -- Mac vs PC, Linux vs Windows, Android vs iOS or PS3 vs Xbox -- that divide tech enthusiasts and to discuss something bigger.

Photo Credits: Americans gather outside the White House early May 2, 2011, after hearing that U.S. special forces had killed terrorist Osama bin Laden. Photos by Cheryl Nichols, from TwitPic.

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