OBL Online

OBL Online

Kipp has been rather fascinated with the online activity following the announcement of the death of Osama Bin Laden.

May 3, 2011 4:14 by shafeer

Not really one to get political, Kipp has been rather fascinated with the online activity following the announcement of the death of Osama Bin Laden.

Did you know the news that Osama bin Laden was dead generated the most activity on ever seen on Twitter (in terms of “sustained rate of tweets”). Shortly after President Obama’s report that OBL is no longer, there were on average 3,440 tweets per second (TPS) for two whole hours. The only tweets which were above that level were generated during the Super Bowl 2011 but then again that only lasted for 20 minutes.

It wasn’t just Twitter that was abuzz with the news, so too was its bigger social networking brother Facebook. Buzzfeed has compiled this list of 40 Incredibly Stupid Facebook Reactions To Osama Bin Laden’s Death—granted some of the statuses aren’t very funny or silly but it’s a good example of just how alive Facebook became with news of the death of the former Al Qaeda’s chief. Or consider the Facebook page “Osama Bin Laden is DEAD” that has been “liked” by more than 455,000 people.

The news has also spurred on cybercriminals to lure users searching for news or images of OBL on Google into clicking on links which are tainted with malware or viruses. Discovery News reports: “Malware began popping up websites optimized to appear on web searchers related to bin Laden’s death. Scammers took advantage of the phrase “Osama bin laden dead” luring Internet users to links supposedly containing photos, videos and other information surrounding bin Laden’s death.

For our part, Kipp has noticed a lot of “what-is-with-the-USA-USA-chants” rhetoric, but that could also be related to who our friends are. What about you, dear reader? Have you noticed anything odd in the online-social networking reaction to the announcement of OBL’s death?