Inside Breaking News

7 biggest Breaking News stories of 2011

It goes without saying, but it’s been an incredible news year. Here at BreakingNews, we’ve compiled the biggest breaking stories of the year — the stories that drove the biggest traffic spikes, the most @breakingnews retweets, the fastest stream of updates, the most social media reports and some of the most stunning eyewitness YouTube clips:

7. East Coast earthquake - A rather minor earthquake isn’t going to make many “top news stories” lists, but the rare August 23rd tremor that shook the East Coast was unexpected enough to crash BreakingNews.com. The quake set a record for the most simultaneous users visiting the site — most within a few minutes — as well as the most activity we’ve seen in our Facebook chats (1,000+ comments in a couple hours.) And it was the first story that bubbled across Twitter so fast, people saw tweets about the quake before feeling it themselves.

6. Norway attacks - When a bomb exploded in the middle of Oslo, Norway on July 22nd, dozens of residents snapped photos and recorded videos. While we furiously posted updates from citizen reports and Norwegian news sites, we started to hear about a second tragedy: a shooting at a youth camp on an island outside Oslo. Together, this story ranked in our top 5 traffic events for the year.

5. Steve Jobs dies - A six-word tweet, “Apple says Steve Jobs has died,” sparked shock and disbelief across Twitter. In fact, it set our all-time record for the most @breakingnews retweets with an incredible social outpouring across the globe: 11,000 retweets and 10,000 new Twitter followers in just a few hours time. We’ve never witnessed such an immediate social reaction to any story we’ve posted.

4. Joplin tornado - We were first alerted to the impending tragedy on May 22nd with this tweet from @stormchaser4850, “**MULTIPLE VORTEX TORNADO REPORTED NEAR JOPLIN, MISSOURI** TAKE COVER IMMEDIATELY!!” Moments later, the damage reports began to stream in: hospital on fire, neighborhoods wiped off the map. We discovered this chilling YouTube clip moments after it was posted — the terrifying sounds of people huddled in the back of a convenience store, praying above the deafening wind. Amazingly, they survived, but 160 others lost their lives in one of the most devastating tornadoes in U.S. history.

3. Arab Spring - We’ve posted more updates on the protests and violence in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen than any other story in 2011: over 5,000 in all (which you can review as a historical timeline of the events in each country). The protests sparked more social media reports of any international story to date: the steady stream of citizen tweets, photos and videos told stories that reporters were unable to reach. (A special thanks to Andy Carvin for his terrific work curating and crowdsourcing many of those reports.) The Arab Spring may always be known as the true starting point for social-powered citizen reporting.

2. Osama bin Laden killed - It wasn’t our biggest traffic event or even our most-retweeted story (we retweeted @nytimes on this story), but President Obama’s stunning Sunday night announcement of Osama bin Laden’s death triggered 111 updates on BreakingNews.com before sunrise the next morning. That’s the most updates our team has posted on a single story over such a short period of time. It was also one of our most-difficult editorial decisions: we saw tweet after tweet with rumors and half-confirmations of bin Laden’s death, but we waited several minutes for an official confirmation before publishing it.

1. Japan earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis - When a tsunami swept Japan after one of the largest earthquakes in modern times, the world watched in awe as surreal video and photos showed entire towns swept away. Throughout the night U.S. time, our team published updates from Japanese media while linking YouTube clips and Twitpics moments after they were posted — like this one which how has 16 million views— and BreakingNews.com’s traffic went on to set an all-time record before noon the next day. This remains our biggest traffic event in our history, our largest jump in Twitter followers (+25,000 in two days alone) and the story that introduced many people to BreakingNews’ real-time coverage.