It's a great time to be working at Twitter.

Remember CNN when the Gulf War started in 1990? Before then, it was watched mostly by obsessive news followers -- people in finance and government, political science professors, insomniacs. Then Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and suddenly CNN was everywhere. Even in bars.

That's what's going to happen with Twitter after tonight's announcement that U.S. Special Forces killed Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad, a Pakistani city about two hours from the capital Islamabad.

Twitter was the first place to report that President Obama would address the nation on a national security issue -- that happened at 9:45 ET. At 10:25 Keith Urbahn (not to be confused with Keith Urban), the former chief of staff for Bush's Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, broke the news.

"So I'm told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn."

The rest of the media didn't "officially" confirm it until 20 minutes later. President Obama didn't speak until 11:35.

By that time, the Twitter stream had already moved from rumor to fact to strange observations (Hitler was confirmed dead exactly 66 years before) to criticisms of Fox News (for spelling "Osama" with a "B") to inappropriate jokes and fake accounts -- OsamainHell tweeted about not being able to do any more videos, while GhostOsama regretted enabling location on his tweets.

Meanwhile, Obama finished talking and Brian Williams resumed his solemn platitudes and the TV suddenly seemed very old and boring.

In other words, Twitter was faster, more accurate, and more entertaining than any other news source out there.

Which means the next time my dad asks me why anybody would use Twitter, I'll finally have a good response.