Spreading the word:Hiding in his dorm room, Virginia Tech first-year student Bryce Carter (18) did what anyone his age would do in a time of crisis - he blogged.
First he assured friends that he was alive. Then he posted a video he shot of police cars gathering outside and still photos of sharpshooters.
"My friends could be dead," he typed on Bryce's Journal, which is usually dedicated to partying, the environment and Virginia Tech sports. "Tears continue."
Members of the most wired generation in history dealt with Monday's bloody campus rampage by connecting on blogs, Facebook and other websites. Their eyewitness descriptions, photos and video made the trauma unfolding in the rural Virginia town immediate and visceral to millions.
Thousands of miles from the shootings, University of Southern California (USC) sophomore Charlotte Korchak received a call from her mother in Maryland - Virginia Tech, she learned, was a death scene.
Rather than tie up the mobile phones of friends who attend the school, the 19-year-old history student checked their pages on Facebook, the social networking site. "I was able to immediately find out who was okay," she said. "Without Facebook I have no idea how I would have found that out."
Every tragedy now seems accompanied by an outpouring of grief and solidarity on the internet - a fire hose of news, rumour, photos, mobile phone videos and instant opinion. So was the case on Monday, as the death toll climbed to 33 at the Virginia Tech campus.
For many college students, this could become their defining tragedy. Most were only in grade school or perhaps middle school during the Columbine High School massacres of 1999 and the September 11th terrorist attacks two years later.
By Monday evening, more than 16,000 had flocked to Facebook's "April 16, 2007 - A Moment of Silence" discussion group. Other impromptu memorial groups drew thousands of members each.
"Since the launching of Facebook, there's probably nothing that has impacted the college audience as this has," said Brandee Barker, a spokeswoman for the three-year-old site.
On Monday, TechSideline.com, a website for fans of Virginia Tech sports, turned into a makeshift meeting place where visitors could seek word about loved ones. "It allows you to feel closer to the situation," said Robert Niles, editor of USC's Online Journalism Review and a former Rocky Mountain News reporter who covered the Columbine killings.
As the story broke, users of Digg, a popular news-sharing site, posted stories by CNN and ABC News, then returned to those posts to share fatality counts, warm wishes to survivors, condolences to families of the dead and links to a mobile phone video recorded by a Virginia Tech student outside Norris Hall as the shooting happened.
"What this link became was a place to learn what happened in the last five minutes," said Jay Adelson, chief executive of San Francisco-based Digg.
Anthony Le (19), a civil engineering student at Virginia Tech, kept his ear pressed to a police scanner all morning as the drama unfolded, then posted on Digg whatever information he learned.
"The count of the fatalities was a lot slower on CNN than on Digg," Le said.
Bryce Carter left class shortly before 10am, saw police cars and wondered what was brewing. A message began blaring over the campus loudspeaker: "This is an emergency. Take shelter indoors immediately. Stay away from windows and remain inside."
Gunshots sounded. He headed for his dorm. He managed to make two calls before the mobile phone networks jammed. He sent out instant messages to friends on the other side of campus.
"We didn't know anything," Carter said. "So we kept trying to find out things online." He then began to blog. At 10:48, he posted the photos and a quick account of the morning's events. An hour later he posted video he shot on his digital recorder. Soon, the death toll began to emerge.
"We topped Columbine," he wrote at 12:40. "Please God, have none of them be my friends." Carter's first-hand account, which many websites linked up to, drew dozens of comments. Reporters seeking interviews began to post messages on Carter's blog. Some of his readers objected, calling the journalists "ghouls" and "vultures".
Timothy Campbell, a forensic scientist in Toronto, posted encouragement, telling Carter, "everyone is watching". Campbell said: "I like to get a mixed viewpoint, both from big media, which can be detached, and from Bryce, who's intimately connected with the event."
By the end of the day, Carter said he had heard from countless friends and strangers.
- (LA Times-Washington Post)