With the news that social media, including Facebook is playing a big part in the Virginia Tech tragedy, I’ve been expecting the case for SMS and Twitter to come up.

As much as we are grabbing RSS feeds and other Google alerts from CNN  etc, there’s nothing more poignant and immediate than the blog, for instance from Planet Blacksburg,  Their student writers are on the scene, and before they go to print they can report a different nuance of the story via the blog.

"We can only publish what we know for sure, but in the blog I can tell you a little bit more of what we’ve heard,"   said one post.

PB has also begun a Twitter feed that tells you when they’re posting a video to the newspaper site, or about an interview. The RSS feed for VTNews is updated at 10.10 am, 2.10 pm and 5.10 pm every day.

As for SMS, there are many cases being made for how text messaging might help in tragedies and disasters:

• A Boca Raton, FL company is launching Student Text Connect.
• VTech had apparently looked into SMS technology last year.
• One provider I know in Phoenix, AZ, Blumo, says they could deliver SMS, email, and RSS feeds simultaneously on a campus. This would be valuable for communicating to faculty, students and staff for time-sensitive communications.