Watching and Weighing in on Facebook

A 30-year-old who lives in Bronxville and works in Scarsdale said he followed the whole thing through Facebook and Twitter for hours overnight.
Starting with the Tweet from the White House previewing a special announcement by the President, Omar Ranginwala, a software developer, said he and everybody else speculated on the topic while waiting, as the rumor swirled that Osama bin Laden had been killed.
President Obama announced the news that —and then, he said, the social media world went crazy.
"I'm usually on Twitter at that time," Ranginwala said. "And we were all reading the news—we were all waiting for Obama to speak. Then I was, like, 'wow.' I was up very late last night—up until probably 1-2 a.m. on Facebook and Twitter. It was awesome. You see the imagery, you see things happening, like in Times Square. We were sharing a lot of different posts on the matter."
In fact, the international story broke on Twitter when a former White House staffer from the Bush administration tweeted it, according to news reports.  And it wasn’t the only example of the power of social media to transform world news. An Abbotabad blogger posted a couple of comments about a helicopter and firefight before going to bed. He woke up to find himself internationally known as the man who live blogged the raid on bin Laden’s compound.

Here's how some other local folks reacted via social networks:

Peter Carey via Facebook: "is anyone else getting goose bumps listening to the crowds chant USA! and sing the National Anthem outside the White House!"

Valerie DeBenedette on Facebook: "Bin Laden is dead. As Moms Mabley used to say, you should only speak good about the dead. He's dead. Good."