12:00am.
I am desperate to hear news from Japan after the earthquake happened. Rather than Yahoo news, I choose to search on Facebook to obtain primary data. As I expected, the Facebook wall that used to be full of “5 hours till midterm…” or “come to our Year End AGM!”posts, was now replaced by thousands of posts of tsunami updates and prayers for Japan. I hungrily search for posts from my Japanese friends, but I wasn’t able to find any.
At 12:30am, I found Kaveh’s “UBC Humanitarian Aid for Japan” group and was encouraged to do my part in helping Japan — by helping organize the BizzComm Expressions Charity Concert and 1000 paper cranes donation. 
Just like how I found out about Kaveh’s group and Japan relief donation events, CTV and Global TV reporters also found out about us on Facebook. At first it was hard to picture news anchors surfing on Facebook and coming across to student-initiatives, I finally realized that the news industry also recognized the value of Facebook as a primary data.
What I had not expected was the scale of impact that news 
was to the community. Restaurants, non-profit groups soon looked into collaborative efforts to donate to relief in Japan. At that time, I realized how “real” Facebook was (how it wasn’t just purely primary data) and how social media could cause an immediate impact in uniting students from such a scattered demographic.
After Expressions Charity Concert, I linked the event on Facebook thanking all the people who helped raise $750 in merely two days. Within 5 mins after the post, I received a short but touching word from one of my best friends whom I had lost contact with. It wasn’t an email per say, but one word to express her thanks – a “like” on my Facebook status.