Twitter and Facebook users are helping Philadelphia police in an investigation as they search for a group of suspects accused of beating up a gay couple on Sept. 11.

A large group of well-dressed young men and women allegedly used gay slurs while mocking two men in their late 20s who were walking near Rittenhouse Square. The victims were then viciously attacked, which left one man with a broken eye socket and a wired jaw, and the other with bruises and a black eye.

Soon after police posted video footage of the suspects online, a Twitter user posted a photo of the group inside of a restaurant on the night of the attack. That's when other social media users figured out which restaurant they went to and used Facebook's "check in" feature to see and identify people in the picture, reports The Associated Press.

One Twitter, user who goes by the handle @FanSince09, said he decided to take action in the case because he was "horrified" by reports of the attack.

"These people are captured clear as day [in the video footage]. You can see the faces, you can see what they're wearing," he told Philly.com

He said that he wrote a series of tweets encouraging his followers to try to identify the people in the video, and about a dozen of his friends used Twitter and Facebook to help crack the case. They forwarded information to Detective Joe Murray, who passed the information to the detectives working the case.

"If this is one example of something happening, imagine the future of what else you can do with social media," Murray said. "With Twitter, I have tens of thousands of eyes that can look and help."

Officials say that they are grateful for the social media users sending detectives tips about the suspects.

"This is the largest public display that I've seen of crowdsourcing to get info for crime victims," Sgt. Eric Gripp of the Police Department's Public Affairs unit told Philly.com. "We receive a lot of info daily about the videos we post. We don't seem to see it to the scale that this was."

So far, no arrests have been made in the investigation, but police have spoken to several persons of interest Wednesday night.

One person reportedly involved in the attack was an assistant basketball coach at the Archbishop Wood High School Wood, who has since been fired.