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Comment by quizbiz | Hacker News Reader

Correct me if I'm wrong but apparently twitter broke the story?

A guy in Abbottabad appears to have tweeted about the helicopter, as it was happening. http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual

I was watching MSNBC cover it. They were ready to break the news, and just before they were about to say it, they pulled it back. I checked Twitter, and the news was already there. NBC announced it a few minutes later.

It's interesting going back and looking at google realtime search and seeing how the story broke.

It appears that @rawls on twitter was the first to call it http://goo.gl/6FMtV

According to the New York Times[1], https://twitter.com/#!/keithurbahn/status/64877790624886784 broke the story.

[1] http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/how-the-osa...

Might be a coincidence or a random tweet, but:

  @Obi_JohnKanObi‎ #becauseoftwitterbeef we found osama bin laden
  Twitter - 1 May 2011 18:12:31

edit: It's entertaining to see all of the "I'll do X if Osama Bin Laden is found today" tweets that were made hours before 10PM ET.

One of the very early tweets was from...The Rock.

Which almost makes sense.

http://twitter.com/#!/TheRock/status/64877987341938688

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