Social media comes into its own

The number of social media posts about Osama bin Laden’s death eclipsed those of the royal wedding and the Japanese earthquake yesterday.

Across the English-speaking internet, people posted 1.2 million posts on all social media sites about bin Laden on Sunday and Monday morning, according to NetBase.

The news of bin Laden’s death was revealed on Twitter 45 minutes before President Obama made an announcement about the operation.

The hours surrounding the news broke a record for the highest sustained rate of messages ever posted on Twitter. In a 3.5 hour period after it happened, an average of 3,000 messages per second were being posted on the micro-blogging site (which has 200 million registered accounts), according to the Wall Street Journal.

This brings into question whether ‘news’ will be able to be concealed or embargoed in the future. There is an interesting article in The Telegraph today, which suggests that super-injunctions have been rendered ‘pointless’ by Twitter.

…Perhaps that is why Max Mosley lost his Human Rights bid to force the media to warn people before exposing their private lives at the European Court today.