Using Storify to Capture my Social Media Community's Reaction to the News about Osama Bin Laden's Death

As is the trend with breaking news stories in the last three-to-four years, each one seems to top the next in how social media was used to cover, spread and react to the event.  Last night's news about Osama Bin Laden finally being killed began and ended on Twitter.  From a Pakastani man documenting the raid in real time, to the first unofficial news of the story being leaked well before the President addressed the nation, to four thousand tweets-per-second being published about the news, television and newspapers took a back seat to social media once again.

Another pattern of breaking news is use of new tools to help us capture and share the story each time.  Last night some news outlets harnessed a powerful new curation tool Storify to pull together people's reactions to the news in one easily consumable timeline.  Storify enables "authors" to combine original content with social media curation to tell a story through the eyes of many.  I think this is just the beginning of us all following big historical events through quickly curated Storify timelines.

Here's my own coverage of last night's news, as told through my social media community.  I've broken down into a few sections: raw reactions & discussion, an overview of how people used different social media platforms to share & celebrate the news, and some interesting longer-form blog articles about how social media played its part in spreading the news.

Where are you Living and Learning Online?

Lately I've been somewhat overwhelmed with how many place there are to consume content now online. On a given day I make my way to Google Reader, Twitter, Friendfeed, Tumblr, Facebook, and Yammer all just to read content. Some of it is news, some of it is editorial, some of it is friend content (pictures, videos, etc), some of it is recommended links, etc. And, yeah, there is a lot of overlapping content in all of those places, but there is also a great deal that is unique to the environment. There are hyper-users (I'm one) who post content everywhere, and I'll probably be reading their stuff several times on each stop, but a lot of people have their spot and they stick to it. Also, more interestingly, each place has its own culture and voice. Jump over to Tumblr, for example, and it's mostly people sharing interesting pictures and music a few times a day. Friendfeed, on the other hand, is all about comments and conversation.

I usually find something great in each community that I wouldn't have found anywhere else every time I visit, so I can't stop.

The other half of it is also interesting. I syndicate my blog, my Google Reader items, and my Flickr photos all over the place, and I share some links in each of these communities. But for my specific group of friends, most of the time when I share content the only place I see a reaction/response (comments) is on Facebook. On the other hand, most articles I write here or at UsableClicks receive a majority of their traffic leads from Twitter.

So where are you spending time, where are you getting your information, where are you experiencing true community?

Twitter tells us today's pop culture news trends

Twitter has a great post today on top pop culture interest trends as displayed by twitter activity.  In true Twitter fashion, all of the trends are described in 140 characters or less:

• T-Mobile is trending because Google and T-Mobile have announced G1 a fancy new computer phone like the iPhone.
• Obama is generating tweets today as people react to his comments on CNN from Florida about the current state of the US economy.
• Heroes is still inspiring tweets even after the US premiere of its second season—lots of folks are just now watching it via DVR or online.
• Sarah Palin trends every day but today folks are tweeting about her visit to the UN and that she's only had a passport since 2007.
• iPhone is generally popular but trending more today because of a power adapter recall and the new competitor from Google.
• Adobe is generating tweets today because they've released their flagship software suite, Adobe CS4.
• Paulson is showing up in the Twitter trends as people exchange opinions about the government bailouts in the US.
• Mothra is trending apparently due to a growing meme of "Your Mothra..." jokes—not sure what's up with that.
• Apple seems to be trending for two reasons: folks are eating a lot of apples today and they're discussing iPhones and other Apple products.

Headline: "Price War Hurts ID Thieves"

This is mildly frighting and mildly funny - in today's Metro there's an article discussing how a glut of stolen credit card numbers and other personal information has forced ID thieves to adopt mainstream business tactics, such as price-cutting, to appeal to their customers:

Fierce competition among identity thieves has driven the prices for stolen data down to bargain-basement levels, which has forced crooks to adopt mainstream business tactics to lure customers, according to a new report on Internet security threats.

The price of a credit card number has apparently dropped from $2 to $0.40 of recent.
[read more from a San Francisco Metro article I dug up here]