Father tweets soldier’s death

U.S. soldier Aaron Fairbairn was killed yesterday when a Taliban suicide bomber breached the security of his base in eastern Afghanistan,

Within 24 hours, Fairbairn’s death has become the #1 topic on Twitter, thanks to the social networking of his stepfather, Dave Masters.

When Masters realized that he didn’t know how to let Fairbairn’s know about his death, he took to the Twittersphere, asking his Twitter followers to re-tweet his messages.

The Jerusalem Post has more details:

Masters began posting notice of Fairbairn’s death on Twitter, the social networking site: “They killed my son, Aaron!” he wrote.

He continued to vent his frustration on the site, he said, soon realizing that he could use the network of people to commemorate his son’s death.

“Thank you, Aaron, for making the ultimate sacrifice this Independence Day,” Masters wrote, later asking the Twitter community to r-post ‘Thank you, Aaron’ on their personal pages, in order to make the issue a popular topic on the Web site. And they did. On Sunday, it was ranked first under the site’s trending topics section, a list of the day’s most posted subjects.