if Facebook and Twitter had been around on 9/11

As I lay my head down to sleep, it is almost 9/12, the day after the tenth anniversary of 9/11. A random thought popped into my mind about how powerful Facebook and Twitter are when it comes to any disaster. What if they had been around on 9/11/2001?
Like many, I was headed to work when the first tower fell. I got to work just in time to see the second tower fall. Since that moment, the world was glued to the internet to find the latest news. Back then, people had to go to each website and constantly hit the refresh button. If one was lucky, they had someone on Yahoo Messenger from that area who could possibly provide an eyewitness account of what was happening live.
Now, when a big event happens, it has been proven time and time again that people turn to social media in order to get live updates. One of the first of this kind was the Virginia Tech shooting a few years ago. People could update their Facebook statuses and let families and friends know that they were ok. During the military base shooting spree in Texas a couple of years ago, people on base could give firsthand accounts of what was taking place or where the shooter was. During the deadly earthquake in Haiti, there was hash tags dedicated to people trying to see if anyone in the "Twitterverse" knew their whereabouts and if they were ok.
This is totally hindsight looking back with 20/20 vision here. But social networking during another (God forbid) attack would be a good tool. Information is refreshed automatically and it is more centralized, meaning one doesn't have to open multiple browsers in order to get information. People will update their Facebook statuses or tweet information as it is happening. On a more serious note, people are connected so people can ask within their online network if someone was ok.
The only drawback to all of this is that social media runs on the internet. It is only powerful if cell phone service or Wi-Fi networks do not go down. On 9/11, for example, the entire internet was slow and the cell phone networks were hard to get through due to higher than average usage. Yes, social media is very powerful and will be used over again for every big event. But we need to make sure that the technology behind social media can withstand the effects that social media has made on our society.