New Twitter record set

Bin Laden's death gets huge reaction online...

09:21 03 May 2011

The death of al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, has set a new record on the social networking site, Twitter.

The site recorded that Twitter users posted 3,440 tweets per second, on average, between 10.45pm and 2.20am EST.

At its peak, users were posting over 5,100 tweets per second.

This is the highest rate of sustained tweeting ever.

The news of Bin Laden's death first broke on the popular social networking site at 10.25pm EST on 1 May.

Keith Urbahn, former chief of staff for Donald Rumsfeld, posted that he had been told of Bin Laden's death by a "reputable" person.

The al-Qaeda leader was shot in the head when a small team of American forces raided the compound, where he was found to be staying, in Pakistan.