In yet another illustration of the power of social media, the news of Osama bin Laden's death broke over Twitter, reported The New York Times.

Keith Urbahn, the chief of staff for the former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is credited with breaking the story, tweeting “So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn.”

CNET news pointed out that while Twitter has been used to break several stories, such as the landing of a plane on the Hudson River, bin Laden's death "was by far the weightiest story that Twitter has ever helped break."

Twitter also was the first to report that U.S. President Barack Obama would address the nation live about a national security issue. Twitter reported 4,000 tweets per second during Obama's address, the New York Times said.

Just as CNN became a household name after the first Gulf War started in 1990, now it is Twitter's time to shine, Matt Rosoff wrote for Business Insider. "Twitter was faster, more accurate, and more entertaining than any other news source out there," he wrote.

The Huffington Post put together a compilation of how different websites covered the news of bin Laden's death.