The blogger who live-tweeted raid on Osama

BANGALORE, INDIA: Credit it to Twitter or Sohaib Athar and Smedica. It was their conversation over Twitter that led the world to follow the the US helicopters' raid on Obama's hide-out followed by his death. Literally a live coverage!

The conversation made Athar an instant celebrity on blogosphere. And thanks to such bloggers, Osama's death is the news of the day - be it Twitter, Facebook or the umpteen other social media platforms.

Sohaib Athar is a Twitter user (@ReallyVirtual) residing at Abbottabad, Lahore, Pakistan. He defines himself as an 'IT consultant taking a break from the rat-race by hiding in the mountains with his laptops'. Sohaib would have never expected that this break would fetch him big break globally. Another user has perhaps a mundane identity with just a user name as @Smedica, who is yet to assume the 'celebrity' status!

Sohaib first tweeted, “Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event)”, followed by other tweets, “Go away helicopter - before I take out my giant swatter :-/” and “A huge window shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope its not the start of something nasty :-S”.

The two tweeted and also mutually talked about hovering helicopters. He is the conversation between the two:

SS @ReallyVirtual Was it shot down? Or it crashed by itself?

Sohaib @smedica people are saying it was not a technical fault and it was shot down. I heard it CIRCLE 3-4 times above, sounded purposeful.

SS @ReallyVirtual 3-4 times is a little less. I've been hearing helicopter flying since 12.35 am may be 10-12 times!

Sohaib @smedica It must have been more, I started noticing the helicpoter when the noise got irritating - which part of Abbottabd are you in?

SS @ReallyVirtual Near PMA road, and I also heard the first blast at around 12.35 am, right now I'm hearing sirens. Where do you live?

For Sohaib, who how has more than 19,000 followers on Twitter, and is listed at 187 places on the microblogging platform, it was a surprise to discover that he was largely being talked about in the media. The blogger is receiving suggestions to pen down his experience in a book, asking whether he was a neighbor of Osama.

And he has got requests for interview too. @ralphieaversa (Ralphie Aversa) tweeted, “@ReallyVirtual Any chance you can do a quick interview via Skype? Even if it's audio only, that's cool too. Syndicated U.S. radio show thx.”

Osama died long ago?

While Twitter is celebrating the moment, Facebook is getting similar reaction globally, a fan page titled "Osama Bin Laden is DEAD" has received more than 295,000 'likes'. As of 5.15 p.m IST the page has recorded 295,484 likes.

“Osama Bin Laden has not been found and will never be found because he died a long time ago. This may be news to you because it wasn't in the news,” said the page, which added, “His death is critical to the CIA because they want you to believe in this so called 'War on terror' which has made the world a more dangerous place. If Osama Bin Laden was alive, he would've been found - just like Saddam Hussein.

Is it true? Because media reports say that the body of the Al Qaeda leader was buried at sea after he was killed by US forces in Pakistan. So, who saw the body of dead Osama? Maybe we will have to wait for another Twitterati to bring the other side of the news!