Osama Bin Laden was killed in a secret US military operation last night, and a Twitter user was the first person reveal the highly secret operation, he unintentionally revealed the operation as he tweeted about the situation in his home town.
An IT consultant, living in Abbottabad, Sohaib Athar, tweeted details of the US-led operation as it happened, as he heard helicopters flying above his home and then heard heavy machine gun fire.
It’s not the first time social networks have been at the centre of major breaking stories, the recent Democracy demonstrations across the middle east gained traction with demonstrators as they used social networks to organise demonstrations using Twitter and Facebook.
Sohaib Athar wrote that a helicopter was hovering overhead shortly before the assault began and said that it might not be a Pakistani aircraft.
He only became aware of the significance of his tweets after President Obama announced details of Bin Laden’s death earlier today.
He has now a massed 23,000 followers and it’s going up by the minute, he said: “I am JUST a tweeter, awake at the time of the crash. Not many twitter users in Abbottabad, these guys are more into facebook. That’s all.”
Mr Athar’s first posting on the subject came at around 1am local time (9pm BST). He wrote: “Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).”
But he is seeing the funny side of it “ Uh oh, now I’m the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it.”
Soon after, he reported the sound of an explosion, now thought to be the US destroying one of their damaged helicopter.
“A huge window shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope its not the start of something nasty :-S”
Throughout the raid, Mr Athar was drawing on information from friends in the local area who were also online.
So, Twitter and Facebook really is changing the world, and shaping the future where information and news is circulating around the world in real-time taking major media corporations out of the loop. News straight from the horse’s mouth, if you will.