The Daily Review was lonely Wednesday morning. It had no friends, no enemies. Nothing.

It sat in obscurity, merely waiting to be found. To know and to be known.

A day and 532 “likes” — essentially friends — later, it’s arguably the most popular medium in Morgan City at the moment.

Yep, for those who are not aware, The Daily Review now has a page on the social networking site Facebook (search for Morgan City Daily-Review).

The paper’s rapid popularity on the social networking site is something that has been repeated many times before.

Let’s face it, Facebook used to be just for college students.

Then it began to explode, even adding *Gasp* parents and grandparents now.

The site has grown so popular that it now has more than 750 million active users, 50 percent of those logging in on any given day, according to Facebook figures.

Visitors spend more than 700 billion minutes per month on the site.

It’s value as a tool for news media has enhanced, too.

It wasn’t until this spring’s flood fight in Morgan City, when I found various governmental agencies had begun using the site, that I found out just how valuable it really was.

Locals who needed information during this nerve-wracking time looked no further than the St. Mary or St. Martin Parish homeland security pages.

There, photos of the high water and its effects on different areas as well as updates on property and forecasts of what the river was projected to do all were available.

More than these select few have joined Facebook, too.

A quick search on the website produces pages for KWBJ TV 22, Morgan City Police Department, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (New Orleans District), Louisiana Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness and plenty more.

This instant communication is not limited to Facebook, either.

Twitter is abuzz, too, and the news media is taking advantage of it.

Stories have been generated off of what people have written on their Twitter page, i.e. Reggie Bush’s tweet (message): “It’s been fun New Orleans,” after the New Orleans Saints drafted Mark Ingram in the first round of this year’s draft.

Even Louisiana Treasurer John N. Kennedy logged on to his Twitter account and tweeted after he was re-elected without opposition when qualifying for fall elections ended last week.

Look at Skype, communications software that allows for communication — with an Internet connections — via messaging, voice and video. WWL TV in New Orleans has been utilizing the tool in its reporting.

While not quite social media, here at the Review, video has been added to our website (www.stmarynow.com) from high school football games. It’s all part of our effort to bring our readers that much closer to the games they may have missed or an opportunity to relive the great combacks or amazing performances they may have watched in person.

All of these are just new wrinkles in the ever-growing and rapidly changing world of technology — and newspapers, too.

It’s a new and exciting time for journalists and communications in general, probably as big when email was developed.

For the public, that means there is no reason to be unconnected or friendless — at least not for long.