Immediately, people started showing their support for the 239 people aboard flight MH370, which departed Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing.
The hashtags #MH370 and #PrayForMH370 were created and used by people to get updates on the missing plane and offer prayers and other messages of support and hope.
The hashtags have featured most on Twitter and have also popped up on Google Plus, Facebook and Instagram.
Their timeline has been continuous.
#hashtag.org said the estimated tweets of #prayForMH370 – based on a 1% sample – was between 2,400 to more than 84,000 per hour.
The hashtag had received about 239,000 tweets as of late Sunday afternoon.
Photographs often accompanied #PrayForMH370 and #MH370, including photos posted by relatives of the missing.
Some of the photos were of the missing just prior to them boarding the flight.
As of late yesterday, Malaysian Airlines had released eight statements regarding the progress of the search.