Facebook: Help me find my loved ones

BOSTON — In much the same way loved ones wandered lower New York City with photos of the missing after 9/11, friends and family of Haitian earthquake victims are scouring Facebook and Twitter to make connections.

“Please help me find my brother, his name is Sidney Augustin. He is in Petit Guave or Port Au Prince. He is 26 years old and has a 1  1/2 month old premature son," wrote Julianna Augustin from Miami, Fla.

Most of the more than 5,000 images capture the faces of the missing and unaccounted for. Many are posing for family photos at happy celebrations. Some are marking another year at school. They are young, old, well-dressed, scruffy, male, female: a portrait of Haiti before Tuesday’s devastating quake.

"His girlfriend’s name is Sheena. He is the young man in my profile picture. Please contact me if you find him please.”

“We still have not heard from her," wrote Suzy Ocean Randolph in Boston, Mass., looking for information about her aunt, Marie Francoise Joseph. "She is a Diabetic and has High Blood Pressure. Please if anyone has any information, please email Suzy.”

Haitian diaspora families have glued themselves to televisions and desperately attempted to call loved ones in earthquake-striken Haiti. But downed phone lines and minimal reporting have frustrated many.

On social networking sites that are sometimes criticized for announcing the most mundane of life events, many users have posted heart-wrenching appeals as an avenue to find the missing.

Unable to contact her family living in Port-au-Prince, Alexandra Alexandre is one of more than 180,000 users who joined the Facebook’s Earthquake Haiti page within days and began posting photographs. She said she hopes to enlist the help of other members by publishing this information. In a telephone interview, she expressed her worry for her 14 loved-ones she has been unable to reach.

In the past two days, the site has been inundated with support and concern. The growing photographic album on the site represents a glimmer of hope.

“I hope somebody there (in Haiti) with internet will be able to see the pictures and the message and help us,” said Augustin.

One drawback is the lack on internet in Haiti. While social network users outside Haiti can see the exchange of photos and messages, many inside Haiti cannot. Without internet access, word of the identified cannot leave the country.

Still, Facebook has offered a virtual space for families of the missing to form a community.

“Social networking is a support system, no question. Messages of hope from all over the world have meaning for people who are going through such a horrible experience,” said Dominick Flarey, executive director of the American Associations of Grief Counselors.

Other online social networks including Twitter have been effective in coordinating relief and fundraising efforts. By Thursday morning, the Red Cross raised more than $8 million from a texting campaign advertised on Twitter. The Red Cross also established an online database to aid in the location of relatives.

"Thank God for Facebook," the Port-au-Prince Salvation Army director told ABC News.

View the Facebook Earthquake Haiti page.