“There are so many people that it becomes like a critical mass, and decision-makers find it hard to resist,” said Roger Hyde, multimedia manager for London-based ResQglobal, a private search-and-rescue operation now involved in the hunt for Gimelfarb, told the Chicago Tribune. “I don’t know that we would have been made aware of it had it not been for Facebook. Without social media, none of this would have happened.”

A team were recently in Costa Rica helping with the search for missing US Grad student David Gimelfarb from Chicago. Also helping with th esearch were the Red Cross, and a US Militry team sent to assist from Honduras.

Throughout the mission, I was being fed live reports from the field, which went direct to various media outlets, including the ResQglobal website www.resqglobal.com and Twitter etc.

More than 1,000 people also signed up to the ‘Help Find David Gimelfarb’ Facebook page – these numbers alone caught media attention.

We were contacted by a journalist from the Chicago Tribune in the US to comment on how social networking sites such as Facebook, affect mobilizing support and a campaign to help search for someone like David. Below is what I was quoted as saying…

“There are so many people that it becomes like a critical mass, and decision-makers find it hard to resist,” said Roger Hyde, multimedia manager for London-based ResQglobal, a private search-and-rescue operation now involved in the hunt for Gimelfarb. “I don’t know that we would have been made aware of it had it not been for Facebook. Without social media, none of this would have happened.”

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