Boston police didn’t just use social media to correct errors. The department recognized that the news media were starved for information as the investigation continued. The traditional periodic law-enforcement news conference isn’t enough to feed the news cycle—which is not so much 24/7 as 1,440, the number of minutes in a day.

Media outlets hunger for news updates, videos and short 140-character quotes to fuel their own social and digital channels. The flow of information from the Boston police discouraged the media’s overreliance on unofficial sources.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the bombing investigation was the way that law enforcement employed social media to actually aid the investigation, not merely to manage the news and inform the public. Moments after photos and video of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects were posted to FBI.gov, the government’s website nearly crashed from the crush of visitors. BPD posted all of the official photos and video to social media to compensate for the lagging website and to encourage their online distribution. Many people shared these posts online—with some posts re-tweeted 16,000 to 17,000 times.

Each one of these “shares” on social media increased the visibility of the pictures and video that were key to identifying and locating the suspects—and to letting the suspects know that their images were everywhere. That knowledge is likely what prompted the Tsarnaev brothers to bolt from hiding.