US seizes key hard drives

The Guardian reports that they believe they may have also found communications between senior al-Qaeda lieutenants and bin Laden which could reveal information about potential targets and strategic guidance about the direction of the terror organisation, and the whereabouts of its leadership and operatives. US Navy Seals who raided the Abbottabad compound on Sunday and shot bin Laden and two others dead took away a range of 'removable media' such as computer discs. The US Government believes some of the computer hardware could have been used to ferry messages to and from bin Laden in the absence of an Internet connection or phone link to the hideaway, a two-hour drive from Islamabad, the official said. Full report in The Guardian

Twitter said on Monday that it recorded the highest sustained volume of tweets in its history around the time of the White House's announcement of bin Laden's death. And in an extraordinary twist, Legalbrief reports that the reach of the world's most popular instant messaging service was demonstrated when a computer consultant in Pakistan tweeted about the attack on the terrorist leader's stronghold as it was happening. As the drama unfolded, Twitter didn't just share the news, it was also an element of the story. Mercury News reports that as users around the world vented their jubilation, anger and other feelings about the death of the terrorist mastermind, they not only spread the news, but also elevated the microblogging site into the planet's town square, creating a mosaic of the world's emotions in millions of 140-character bits. As bin Laden's death became widely known, Twitter averaged more than 3 000 tweets a second. 'It's hard to predict a tipping point at any moment in time, but I do think the death of Osama bin Laden will become another critical milestone in Twitter's history, whatever that says about us as a culture,' said Susan Etlinger, an analyst with the Altimeter Group. 'At least what's clear is we are speaking collectively to each other in large enough numbers that we can very quickly assimilate and understand news in a way that hasn't been possible before.' Twitter said the peak of more than 5 000 tweets a second before President Barack Obama spoke and as he wrapped up his address to the nation was about 1 000 more than the peaks during the British royal wedding on Friday and during this year's Super Bowl, but still lower than the day of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in March. Full Mercury News report

A decade ago, Americans watched the images of planes crashing into buildings on television sets. In just 10 years, Americans and others across the globe became witnesses through social media sites like Twitter. The US raid was extremely well organised and highly secretive. In fact, even senior Pakistani officials were kept out of the loop. Yet, the first accounts of the plan came from Sohaib Athar - a computer consultant in Pakistan - who tweeted 'helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1 a.m. (is a rare event)'. 'Go away helicopter, before I take out my giant swatter,' Athar pithily quipped in a tweet at the San Francisco based microblogging service, according to a report on the News24 site. That message was followed in rapid succession by tweets telling of a window-rattling blast, a helicopter crash, a family dying, and then soldiers cordoning off part of the neighbourhood and searching door-to-door. He eventually connected the ruckus to an announcement by Obama that a US military team killed bin Laden in a surgical strike. Fox News reports that bin Laden's neighbour was the first to report on the covert operation, but the tweet heard around the world was made by Donald Rumsfeld's chief of staff, Keith Urban. More than an hour before President Barack Obama made the official announcement, he tweeted: 'So, I'm told by a reputable person they have killed Osama bin Laden'. Althar, the man simply known as ReallyVirtual, was overwhelmed by media attention. On his Twitter bio, he describes himself as an IT consultant taking a break from the rat-race by hiding in the mountains with his laptops. On Saturday morning, he had just 751 Twitter followers. Now, he has more than 81 000. Full Fox News report Full Business News Network report Full report on the News24 site Full report on the News24 site

Celebrities also took to Twitter to celebrate the death of bin Laden, with everyone from Denis Leary to Charlie Sheen ringing in on the demise of the terrorist. 'Osama bin Laden dead. As is the Red Sox (team stats) bullpen,' tweeted Leary, who plays a New York City firefighter in Rescue Me, his long-running FX drama about the fallout from 9/11, but whose heart, apparently, is still in Fenway. 'Dead or Alive. WE PREFER DEAD! Well done SEAL team!' said Sheen, who took a break from his post -Two and a Half Men meltdown to actually make some Twitter sense. The Boston Herald reports that more than a few celebs took the opportunity to give a shout-out to Obama for commandeering the dramatic raid. 'Somali pirates, Gaddafi's son, now bin Laden - do NOT (bleep) with Obama, he's Gangsta!' tweeted HBO pundit Bill Maher. Full Boston Herald report

Apart from Twitter, word of bin Laden's death rocketed through the Internet in rapid-fire Facebook updates and YouTube video clips. According to a report on the News24 site, by midnight on Sunday, more than 250 000 people had 'liked' an 'Osama bin Laden is Dead' page on Facebook. The Facebook page was packed with comments, videos and pictures, some purporting to be copies of graphic close-ups of bin Laden's mortally wounded body. Many of the comments lambasted the slain al-Qaeda leader. Google-owned video sharing Web site YouTube dedicated nearly a third of its home page to clips related to bin Laden's death and the celebrations breaking out on US streets. At geo-location service Foursquare, more than 160 people in San Francisco had 'checked in' to a 'Post-Osama bin Laden World' using their smartphones. News of bin Laden's death caused an Internet traffic spike. Content delivery network Akamai recorded a peak of 'more than 4.1m page views per (minute) on the news Web sites supported and tracked'. However, ITWorld reports that 14 higher traffic peaks have been recorded by Akamai's Net Usage Index since its inception on 18 August, 2005. By far the highest peak (10.4m PVs a minute) came on 24 June 2010, during simultaneous World Cup qualifying matches and the longest Wimbledon tennis match. Four of the five peak PVs a minute recorded by Akamai came during or immediately after World Cup and/or European Cup soccer games. According to another report on the News24 site, news of bin Laden's death caused traffic to increase at popular US news sites. Yet outages and slowdowns were less severe than during major news events in the past, meaning fewer people were stuck staring at error messages. Dave Karow, a manager with Keynote Systems Inc, a California-based company that monitors Internet traffic, said that smartphones helped spread the pain of throngs of people trying to view the same news sites at once. Smartphones typically deliver slimmed-down versions of the regular Web pages, which reduces the load on the Web sites. First report on the News24 site Second report on the News24 site Full ITWorld report