How Whitney Houston News Broke — and Exploded — on Twitter

Following much speculation about which Twitter user first broke the news about the death of Whitney Houston, the site has unveiled new data that indicates one member alluded to the news only seven minutes after police pronounced the singer dead.

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Twitter revealed the first message posted about Houston’s death was made at 4:02 p.m. by user @BarBeeBritt, AKA Brittany J. Pullard. Her message was sent 55 minutes before the Associated Press confirmed Houston’s death, citing her publicist. The Beverly Hills Police said on Saturday night that Houston was pronounced dead at approximately 3:55 p.m. PT.

Twitter also included a link to an image in its tweet that features a timeline chart of the first users to reference the news. The second Twitter user to mention her death was the niece of Houston’s hairstylist @AjaDiorNavy at 4:15 p.m. and @ChileMasGrande at 4:30 p.m. The Associated Press’ breaking news alert came in at 4:57 p.m.

When Mashable reached out to @ChileMasGrande — who then had only 14 followers and now has more than 400 — to learn how he got the tip, he tweeted: ” #just a ordinary dude who got a text message from a family member of Whitney Houston and I tweeted it.. #enjoyingthefame no further comment.”

@BarBeeBritt couldn’t be reached for comment as of press time.

SEE ALSO: Twitter Breaks News of Whitney Houston Death 27 Minutes Before Press

The tragic news of Houston’s death spread fast on Twitter. In fact, about 2.5 million tweets and retweets occurred in the first hour, amounting to more than 1,000 tweets a second, according to Topsy Labs. Although this sent Twitter into a flurry of reactions, it still wasn’t enough to beat last Sunday’s Super Bowl record-breaking tweets.

The Associated Press’ message was retweeted more than 10,000 times, according to data from Topsy Labs. However, the first tweet from @BarBeeBritt was only retweeted three times, according to Media Bistro, and the message from @ChileMasGrande was only retweeted once.

This isn’t the first time news a large-scale death announcement was first reported on Twitter. A computer programmer in Pakistan inadvertently live-tweeted the military raid on the Osama bin Laden compound. “Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1 a.m. (is a rare event),” Athar wrote. His message later received global media attention following the news of bin Laden’s death.

However, death announcements on Twitter are not always accurate, as evidenced most recently by Bon Jovi death rumors and the too-early death claims of former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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