The Power of Social Media

Either you've been living under a rock for the past week or you realized exactly how strong the power of social media is. If you have been living under a rock, I'll briefly explain what happened.
On April 16, two bombs exploded at the Boston marathon, essentially killing three people and injuring over 170 more. This event was such a monstrosity and absolutely despicable, however, without social media we might have never found the attackers.
As with any marathon, many spectators took photos of the race with their phones and one man actually took a photo just after the second bomb exploded. He subsequently sent this photo to police and it was used to track down the suspect.
But here's where social media is really involved: the man posted the photo of one of the attackers on Facebook and it spread like wildfire. Friends of friends starting sharing the photo which caused it to spread even more and people also commented with information they had regarding the suspect. As well, with Twitter, everyone updated with their own information faster than the news could. People turned to Twitter for information rather than the news because Twitter is as real-time as it gets. The two guys that are considered responsible for the bombings were both caught in less than a week, although one suspect passed away in a shoot-out with police.
The link with social media and this case is incredible. I can only imagine what would have happened if social media was around when JFK was shot. Only a small number of individuals ever took photos that even showed the shooter and even then, it still took time and money to get the film developed. It took even longer for news to spread and even then it had to seem relevant to a higher source for it to even begin to spread. Nowadays interesting information can spread much quicker.
This case also highlights the importance of information from our peers. Most people turned to Twitter for their news during this tragedy, which also sparks the debate about the news and how they could become more real-time in a real-time reliant world. That is for another day. I just think it's nice to see what can come from social media when we learn to use it to help us rather than hinder us.