I imagined the panic their parents must be feeling at that moment trying to reach their own sons and daughters to make sure they were all right.

It takes me back to the fateful morning of September 11, 2001 when I stood at my office window in Washington DC and watched smoke billowing from the Pentagon.

I needed to reach my daughters at school in Virginia and my parents and other relatives in Canada and the UK to let them know we were OK. The cellular networks were jammed. Then the landlines went down. It took four hours to get in touch with everybody. But, that was sixlong years ago.

That was before social networking became widespread. During the chaos last week in Virginia, victims, survivors and their families turned to the likes of blogs and social networks for status reports and to keep abreast of people's whereabouts.

When the mobile phone networks jammed, individuals used LiveJournal and MySpace, both popular interactive websites that focus on user-submitted content and personal networks; FaceBook, a similar site originally developed for college students; and blogs, user-generated websites where entries are made in journal style. In addition, hundreds of students posted realtime updates on Twitter, a website that facilitates blogging from mobile phones and delivers updates to the handheld devices of subscribers, almost instantly. Even Wikipedia had an incredibly detailed entry about the day's atrocities posted within hours.

Within a couple of hours more than 2,000 students had joined a Facebook group called, 'I'm OK at VT', as a central information point. It had been created by one student who was being bombarded with emails, texts and calls from far and near, as word of the massacre spread.

'Does anyone know the status of MP? His parents can't reach him and are EXTREMELY concerned. Please reply,' said one entry. Another post read, 'BTW, the hospital could not identify a short black female. If you are looking for anyone like this call Montgomery Hospital.'

One young man panicked when trying to reach his girlfriend: 'Now I'm freaking out and trying to call her but she isn't picking up,' he wrote on his blog. He later reported that she'd finally called him from the hospital where she was about to have surgery for a gunshot wound to her hand.

Almost instantly, support and tribute sites sprang up gathering more than 26,000 members by the evening of the massacre. The very first victim, 18-year old Emily Hilscher, used to have a blog of her own. Some 200 friends posted tributes on her site within hours of the news of her murder. In addition, hundreds of video tributes to Emily and the 31 other victims are turning up on YouTube.

The people directly involved were not the only ones leveraging social media during the crisis. The mainstream media around the world relied on blogs and other user-generated content for information and cited bloggers as sources.

The New York Times, Canada's National Post and the BBC are all examples of top-tier media that relied on citizen journalism to cover events. Imagine how much it easier now is for them to find reliable sources and eyewitness reports during such crises. This trend is set to continue.

The victims and media weren't the only ones using online media for quick communications. The National Rifle Association, the voice of the US gun lobby, ran a message of condolence to the victims and families of the Virginia Tech shootings under the heading What They Didn't Tell You Today.

The Gun Owners Association of America posted a statement on its own website that said, in effect, if more people at the college had been armed, the gunman would have been stopped.

I guess you have to respect the freedom of speech that people enjoy now they have the tools to quickly and easily publish their own thoughts, ideas and opinions.

This horrible event is a case study of how online and social media has fundamentally changed the way humans communicate. Companies would do well to examine it to learn about how to communicate in a crisis or at any other time. Our practices and preferences have changed drastically in the past five years.

Personally, I'm pretty glad to have left DC and to be living here in Douglas.

» Sherrilynne Starkie is the managing partner at Douglas-based Strive Public Relations, a virtual communications consultancy serving the Island's tech sector. She provides her views on business and technology, and the business of technology, each week in Tech Talk. Visit her business blog Strive Notes for frequent updates.

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