Updated

Two billion people around the world tuned in to watch Kate and William tie the knot on TV last week. But judging by early online figures, the death of Usama bin Laden is a much bigger event -- at least for web users.

Shortly prior to President Barack Obama's speech late Sunday night, the number of updates about bin Laden on Twitter was twice as high as the number of wedding updates on Friday.

At 12.30 a.m. EDT Monday morning, almost one in five updates posted to Twitter worldwide included the word "osama,"according to analytics tracking website Trendistic. At the peak of the royal wedding ceremony, the number of updates mentioning "wedding" was almost one in ten.

Searches related to bin Laden and President Obama also dominated Google searches this afternoon.

At midnight Sunday night, Google's Hot Trend list -- which is limited to the U.S. and takes about an hour to update -- showed no sign of interest in the topic.

One hour later, 16 of the 20 most popular search phrases were related to the news, led by "osama bin laden dead" and "president obama."

Read more tech news at News.com.au.