If you’re wondering why half of the Twitter trends are currently related to US president Barack Obama, news broke recently that he has been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.
The official site of the Nobel Foundation is dying under the sudden surge of traffic, but the list of the Nobel Peace Prize laureates has already been updated, as you can see in the screenshot below.
This is a somewhat surprising move by the Nobel Committee, since Barack Obama simply hasn’t had enough time as president to do all that he had set out to accomplish. Still, Thorbjorn Jagland, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, claims that the prize was awarded based on Obama’s work so far. “We are not awarding the prize for what may happen in the future but for what he has done in the previous year. We would hope this will enhance what he is trying to do,†he said.
Twitter is currently overwhelmed with tweets related to the event, and is at times unresponsive, but it’s still holding on. Dozens of topics related to the award and Obama are currently extremely popular on Tweetmeme. If Twitter manages to go through this eventful day (NASA’s LCROSS project, as well as Miley Cyrus quitting Twitter are also popular topics) without a meltdown, it’ll be quite an accomplishment for the service that’s so often troubled with downtime.
Reviews: Tweetmeme, Twitter