Categories: Technology

Thousands of Twitter users flock to follow the chief suspect in Friday’s terror attacks in Norway

Anders Berhring Breivik's Twitter profile

Two days after the horrific terror attacks in Oslo City and Utoeya Island, thousands of Twitter users have begun following the chief suspect, Anders Berhring Breivik.

His Twitter account, @AndersBBreivik, has gained over 2057 followers since Friday [as of Sunday afternoon, July 24 ]; up from just 205 on July 18. Some of Breivik’s new followers understandably belong to news organisations, while others appear to be curious Twitter users; however, some users’ motives for following the account may be more questionable.


Live graph of @AndersBBreivik’s followers

Since Friday the account has been added to 54 Twitter lists; again some of these belong to news organisations; such as the UK’s @channel4news and Ireland’s @Storyful; while others have used their listing of @AndersBBreivik to express their disgust.

Breivik set up his Twitter account on July 17, five days before the attacks and only published one tweet – which we won’t publish here.  This tweet has since been retweeted by over 100 people. Meanwhile, Twitter users have been reacting in disgust by @mentioning Breivik’s account – after news broke on Friday the account was mentioned in nearly 6,500 tweets on Friday alone and in 2,300 tweets on Saturday.

While the Breivik’s Twitter account has remained online, a Facebook account, purportedly belonging to him, has been removed.  Google’s cached version of the page remains online and shows an interest in Political Analysis and George Orwell’s 1984, as well as World of Warcraft, Dexter, and “Hunting.”  A Google+ account which claims to belong to Breivik is still available – although it is difficult to assertain if this was created by Breivik or another person.  The Google+ account contains no posts.

Breivik has admitted to carrying out the Oslo bombing and Utoeya Island shooting which has left at least 92 people dead and 97 injured.

Ajit Jain

Ajit Jain is marketing and sales head at Octal Info Solution, a leading iPhone app development company and offering platform to hire Android app developers for your own app development project. He is available to connect on Google Plus, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Recent Posts

The UK’s push to be a relevant global hub for space technology

Despite lagging behind global space powers like the United States, Russia and China, the United…

4 days ago

US spy community is creating a portal to buy, access your personal data

The Intelligence Community is setting up a one-stop shop, icdata.gov, to buy access to your…

6 days ago

The gaming startup market in Mexico: Opportunities and challenges

The vibrant world of tech startups has found a space carved out for growth and…

6 days ago

As data center demand drives uptick in demand for electricity, AEP and Think Power Solutions focus on AI-enabled utility infrastructure 

Despite the recent volatility seen in the markets, American Electric Power (AEP), one of the…

6 days ago

Building a competitive edge with cloud-native MFTs

The ever-present threat of cybercrime is expected to come with an eye-watering price tag of…

6 days ago

Stefanini Group Accelerates Cloud Expansion with 60% Stake in Escala 24×7, AWS Premier Partner in LATAM

Latin America's cloud adoption is surging. According to recent reports by Gartner and IDC, by…

1 week ago