The tragic news of Whitney Houston’s death was announced on Twitter and spread at a rapid speed. About 2.5 million tweets and retweets occurred in the first hour after her death. This amounts to more than 1,000 tweets a second (according to Topsy Labs).

Below is an image from the first (known) tweet announcing the death of Whitney Houston

"The news of Houston’s death peaked at 5:23 p.m. PT with 61,227 tweets in that minute". Since her death celebrities have paid their respects though Twitter. In doing so attaining retweets (in some cases in the tens of thousands)

The Whitney Houston website currently displays this simple but powerful message:

The Response to Whitney Houston's death on Facebook

It seems that Whitney Houston did not really use Facebook and Twitter. The last message on her Facebook Fan Page appears to have been posted by a third party and her twitter account not used since March 2010. The image on the right is a small snapshot of the tribes displayed on Whitney Houston's Facebook page