For all of our talk about social networking and how it is changing politics, today we were treated to an up close and personal example of how social networking is changing our most basic social interactions.

Within hours of the tragedy that occurred today at Virginia Tech, ABC News had published a story entitled “If You're OK, Please Update Your Profile” which quoted someone named Carlos 'Mohawk Monday' Fernandez asking, “Many of us are all worried about our friends, so lets do this. If you are okay! Please update your status in facebook to say something like ‘I'm okay’.”

With cell phones spotty because of the massive volume of calls, and concrete information even more scarce, Facebook became a vital way of letting family, friends, and even strangers know that you were OK.

We often forget that social networks, particularly sites like Facebook, are more than just an online experiment in Web 2.0, but thrive because they are extensions of our existing real world friendships.

And so, upon hearing the news, Facebook was among the first sites I pulled up. With a single click on my profile, I was able to pull up all of my friends who went to Virginia Tech past and present (And realized that with only six of them, that I had known most of them during the time before Facebook). Most seemed to be ok.

After I got home from work tonight, I stopped by the new Virginia Tech Network Page. Facebook recently launched pages for all of their networks, including universities, where you can see what topics and groups are popular to the members of the campus network. While not well know to many Facebook users yet, I wondered how a campus would use something like this to come together. I caught a glimpse of a wall post on the Virginia Tech page from the brother of a former co-worker announcing a candlelight vigil that night.

It reminded me of how small a world like Facebook truly is, of how interconnected the Americans lucky enough to attend college and universities truly are. I recalled an old Facebook feature that used to tell you exactly the degrees of separation between you and any other person on Facebook, friend or stranger. It was a fascinating illustration of how there are often far less than six-degrees of separation among us. And how something like this resonates far beyond Blacksburg/Christiansburg, Virginia.

But beyond the personal connection that many of us have in a tragedy like this, there was something bigger showcased today in places like Facebook. How we all feel connected to the tragedy, even if we can’t tell a Hokie from a Hoagie. Maybe because almost everyone on Facebook hails from school and could almost imagine a similar tragedy befalling their institution. And how, when faced with the mixture of sadness and helplessness, we seek avenues to combat that helplessness and express our solidarity and support.

We didn’t all go to Virginia Tech.

Or even know people who go to Virginia Tech.

But we can all log onto Facebook.

Within minutes of the tragedy breaking into the news, Facebook groups began to sprout up. Try typing “Virginia Tech” or “Hokies” into Facebook’s group search feature. You'll find dozens of groups like, “Our hearts are with you, VA Tech,” 3 different “Always Remember Virginia Tech” groups, and “A Tribute to those who passed at the Virginia Tech Shooting” group which now has 42,326 members (42,327 now that I’ve joined).

Click to bring up a list of your friends who have recently updated their profile and you’re likely to see at least one who has replaced their picture with this image or one like this (right).

Tomorrow, we’ll see an online outpouring of grief for those 33 students lost. And their Facebook profiles will become memorials, tributes to their lives that were cut short as friends from far and near remember them.

In the coming days, we may even find out that the killer had a Facebook profile. We’ll pour over his profile and try to understand the incomprehensible, never succeeding.

But people from across the world will come together to remember people they may have never have know, or have known all their lives. And they’ll all do it on a virtual place that is as far, or as close, as you can get to Virginia Tech.

Today, when I say that social networking, that Facebook, is changing social interaction as we know it, I only wish I didn’t have to illustrate it with examples like this.