Police investigating two gangs called the Very Crispy Gangsters and the Rockstarz did not need to spend all their time pounding the pavement for leads.
Instead, they fired up their computers and followed the trash talk on Facebook.
"Rockstarz up 3-0," one suspect boasted - a reference to the body count from a bloody turf war between the Brooklyn gangs that ultimately resulted in 49 arrests last month.
Authorities in New York said a new generation of gang members is increasingly using social media to boast of their exploits and issue taunts and challenges that result in violence.
Police and prosecutors have responded over the past several years by closely monitoring Facebook and other sites for leads and evidence.
On Tuesday, a New York Police Department commissioner unveiled plans to beef up the NYPD's cyber crackdown by using aggressive online investigative tactics and doubling the size of the department's gang unit to 300 investigators.
The reinforcements will focus less on established gangs like the Bloods and Crips.
The focus will be more on loosely knit groups of teenagers who stake out a certain block or section of a housing project as their turf and exact vengeance on those who trespass or fail to show the proper respect.
Officers will adopt internet aliases, create phony profiles and seek to "friend" suspects to gain access to non-public information, officials said.
A federal judge in New York has already weighed in on the privacy issue, siding with prosecutors in a gang case in the Bronx. Defence attorneys tried to have the material thrown out, arguing that it was obtained illegally.
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