President Barack Obama's news that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed after a firefight in Abbottabad, Pakistan, sparked one of Twitter's heaviest usage periods ever, with more than 4,000 tweets a second. The event was even reported live on Twitter, with Donald Rumsfeld's chief of staff reportedly announcing the death to his followers before mainstream media outlets broke the story (though he credits "a connected network TV news producer" as his source).
Among Christians, social network streams were full of debate over whether to rejoice in bin Laden's death, with Bible verses quoted by both sides. Stephen Smith, whose OpenBible.info collects realtime data on Bible verse quotes on Facebook and Twitter, compiled this list of the most popular verses in the 12 hours after the news broke....