Virginia Tech shooting shows benefits, pitfalls of social networking sites

"There's great potential for the speed with which very intimate, on-the-ground reporting can be shared," said Mary Madden, senior research specialist at the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a nonprofit research center in Washington. Social networking sites are "already there," she added. "These are networks that in many cases college students are relying on every day."

In fact, some of the victims of the Virginia Tech shooting had added information to their online profiles as recently as Monday morning, Madden noted. "In many ways," she said, "it's a very natural place for students to flock, to gather, to support each other at a time like this, because it's where they are every day anyway."

Students used a variety of sites on Monday to try to find out how dangerous the situation was on the Virginia Tech campus. For example, a long discussion thread on Fark.com contains messages that were posted at a rate of nearly one every minute starting at 9:50 a.m. Monday and lasting until beyond midnight.

Some students picked up information from a Web site that streams police radio conversations. According to conversations on sites like Fark, they also frequently checked the university's home page looking for instructions and other information.

On Tuesday, hundreds of pages on Facebook were dedicated to sending condolences to the families and friends of students who were killed.

The heavy use of social networking sites this week show how the use of technology during crises has changed even since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Then, many people used e-mail to reach out to family members and try to learn about the situation in New York and Washington.

"Now, e-mail is still a valid form of communication," said Danielle Levitas, an analyst at Framingham, Mass.-based IDC. "But for younger people, it's not nearly as popular as a lot of other apps like [instant messaging], posting, blogging and community-related sites."

Indeed, questions are being raised about whether e-mail was the best means for Virginia Tech officials to notify students, faculty members and other campus workers about the shootings on Monday. Word of an initial shooting of two people in a dormitory at about 7:15 a.m. was first spread via a campuswide e-mail sent at 9:30 a.m. -- about 15 minutes before campus police received a 911 call reporting additional shootings in an academic building.

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