A colleague sent out an e-mail that was chalk-full of industry news this chilly Cyber Monday, but one in particular about a depressed 13-year-old girl named Megan Meier really tugged at my heart strings.

For those who haven’t yet heard, Megan’s adult neighbor, Lori Drew, pretended to be a 16-year-old boy to gain the trust of Megan, who had been fighting with Drew’s daughter. After about a month, the “boy” suddenly and cruelly ended the friendship after he told her that he heard she was a bad person. That very night, Megan hanged herself in her room.

Newspapers and broadcast networks didn’t give the name of Megan’s harasser to the public, but it was only a matter of time before she was outed by people from her hometown. Now, many bloggers have started practicing what they call “virtual vigilance” by posting the Drew family’s personal information to such social networks as RottenNeighbor.com and hitsusa.com. I’m not sure if this is the right thing to do from a moral standpoint, but I do find it ironic that the very channel Lori Drew used to manipulate someone else has now turned around and bitten her in the bum.

Many other issues around this tragic story have started a conversation in the blogosphere, too, but one really irks me: Are Megan’s parents to blame for not monitoring her online activities?

Usually, I have the tendency to blame the parents when it comes to dealing with cyber-bullying gone bad, but in this instance, I just can’t. According to Depression.com, depression is a medical condition, “caused by an imbalance of brain chemicals, along with other factors,” and not something you can just snap out of. Then again, recovering is not just about medicine, but psychology, as well. For example, exercise, a healthier diet, and being around supportive people can greatly help the healing process.

I’m not saying that Lori Drew knew that Megan was suicidal, but her daughter was friends with Megan. I might be giving this woman too much credit, but assuming that she’s even a little perceptive, she must have seen that something wasn’t quite right… Yet she still thought it would be okay to taunt this poor girl in what I can only assume was a retaliatory move on behalf of her teenage daughter (who should be old enough to fight her own battles, anyway). Even those who don’t know anything about depression should know that, in life, there is such a thing as a tipping point – a single occurrence that provokes a person to take an extreme action, such as standing up for oneself, or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, attempting to kill/killing oneself.

Like… say, a brutal rejection.

Megan’s issues began long before she met her “Internet friend,” but I believe the straw that broke the camel’s back was caused by Lori Drew. As a consequence, she may take that guilt to her own grave.

Cyber Monday, Depression.com, hitsusa.com, Lori Drew, Megan Meier, Online Communities, RottenNeighbor.com, social networks, virtual vigilance

The ides of October has come and gone, and the Blog Action Day team’s wrap-up e-mail called the event an “unprecedented success.” Considering there were 23,327 blog posts and Blog Action Day was the top Technorati search term and tag for the day, I can’t argue!

Here at Eastwick, we were bringing in some pretty hefty numbers, too, starting with one hundred – One hundred percent of Eastwick bloggers posted on Blog Action Day. It was truly amazing to see how an entire agency of extremely busy people could come together for such a worthy cause (and it didn’t hurt our analytics, either)!

However, this is old news for Eastwick’s more avid blog readers. So, to balance out the old with some new, I’m pleased to report that because of the large number of pageviews accumulated over the past month (if you need more background information on Eastwick’s Blog Action Month project, check here), a very generous donation has been made to the National Wildlife Federation. Congrats again to our exceptional team of bloggers and our dedicated readers.

We all know that the blogosphere can be used for good as well as evil, but I sincerely hope that initiatives such as this one inspire other companies, as well as individuals, to keep at it. We ARE making a difference!

Blog Action Day, Eastwick, National Wildlife Federation, Technorati

The following tale is copied verbatim from a bulletin that a friend reposted on MySpace last night:

About six years ago in Indiana, Carmen Winstead was pushed down a sewer opening by five girls in her school, trying to embarrass her in front of her school during a fire drill. When she didn’t submerge, the police were called. They went down and brought up 17-year-old Carmen Winstead’s body, with her neck broken from hitting the ladder, then the concrete at the bottom. The girls told everyone she fell… They believed them.

FACT: About two months later, 16-year-old David Gregory read this post and didn’t repost it. When he went to take a shower, he heard laughter, started freaking out, and ran to his computer to repost it. He said goodnight to his mom and went to sleep, but five hours later, his mom woke up in the middle of the night from a loud noise and David was gone. A few hours later, the police found him in the sewer, with a broken neck and the skin on his face peeled off.

Even Google her name – you’ll find this to be true.

If you don’t repost this saying “They hurt her,” then Carmen will get you, either from a sewer, the toilet, the shower, or when you go to sleep, you’ll wake up in the sewer, in the dark, then Carmen will come and kill you.

Vacationing back to reality for a moment, I’d like to make it clear that I’m a sucker for scary everything (Stephen King is a god among men in my mind and if you’ve ever driven by my house on Halloween, you’d think I actually lived in a cemetery), but this is a bit too far fetched, even for me. After reading Carmen’s story, the first thing that occurred to me is that this murder happened six years ago, which would have made it in about 2001, but according to Wikipedia, MySpace wasn’t founded until August 2003, so why would a murdered girl wait two years to start her chain letter of death?

A few other fallacies about the story wove their way through my mind, and I also wondered why my twenty-something male friend would actually be scared enough to repost, but what intrigued me the most was one particular sentence I read when I went to see what Snopes had to say about this urban legend.

“Its key difference lies in its recommended mode of transmission: rather than imploring recipients to mail (or e-mail) it to others, it requires them to post it on their MySpace pages.”

Cheesy chain mail has and will always be the same, but the mode in which it’s sent continues to change as technology evolves. When I was a kid, I received them via what we now call “snail mail.” Then it moved to e-mail when I hit my teenage years. Now it’s slowly moving to social networks.

Anyone else see a trend here? Chain mail has the tendency to move to whatever communications vehicle people are using the most frequently. So, if you’re a working professional who really thinks you’ll be using e-mail to get your message to others forever, just remember back to only a decade and a half ago when people thought they’d be using a pad of paper and a pen forever, and beware.

Pass it on…

Carmen Winstead, David Gregory, Google, Halloween, MySpace, Online Communities, Snopes, social networks, Stephen King, Wikipedia

As said in Office Space (a must-see movie), I’ve got a case of the Mondays. So, to lighten things up, here are a few Wikipedia entries that I’ve found to be of interest for those who are interested in useless information:

The May Day Mystery. I went to the University of Arizona for four years, majored in journalism, and yet I’d never heard of this series of ads until today. Starting in 1981, a mystery someone started publishing ads in the Arizona Daily Wildcat (the student newspaper) every May 1st. The cryptic messages have several recurring themes, such as references to “The Orphanage,” which is thought to be the secret society that is allegedly behind the ads. Think you can solve this mystery, Scooby Doo?

Airbus A380. Tired of having nothing to do when you travel? Well fear not, because the largest passenger airliner in the world is coming complete with a duty free shop, a beauty salon and/or a bar. Nicknamed the Superjumbo, this beast can seat between 525-823 people depending on its configuration. The first model takes its initial commercial flight into the friendly skies this Thursday, October 25 (also the day of Eastwick’s B&O Bash). Hopefully, the maiden voyage will go a little bit more smoothly than that of its gargantuan ocean-cruising counterpart, the Titanic.

Unusual Articles. Wow, I wish I’d found this article before I started writing this post, because now there is no point… this page has done all the work for me already! It includes entries on everything from 826 Valencia (San Francisco’s “only independent pirate supply store”) to Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg (the longest place name in the United States and 6th longest in the world).

Okay, that’s enough fun for today. Get back to work!

Airbus A380, Arizona Daily Wildcat, Eastwick, Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg, Office Space, San Francisco, Superjumbo, The May Day Mystery, The Orphanage, Titanic, Wikipedia, wikis

“We don’t need more walls of separation between nations and peoples. We know they can’t protect us from global challenges like AIDS or terrorism or global warming. We need instead, more connections, more bridges of understanding and shared responsibility.” -Mary Robinson, first female President of Ireland.

Although my guess is that Robinson didn’t realize how her words apply to what we call “Web 2.0,” it truly does. Case in point: I found this quote on Sustainable Community Action, a wiki dedicated to helping the average person or community group learn and share information about sustainability.

However, wikis aren’t the only online trend helping to spread the environmental word. Concerned citizens are also utilizing social networks, another very popular online trend. I’ve written about two or three specific networks, but overall, the end results have spoken for themselves. Tons of money has been raised, which means that lots of needy nouns (people, places and things) have been helped, which means that we as Internet users are making a difference. Math is the bane of my existence, but for arguments sake I shall use geometry’s Transitive Property to prove my point. If a = b and b = c, then a = c. Voila!

Then there are blogs. I’ve written about Eastwick’s participation in Blog Action Day today, so I won’t repeat myself too much here, but with 15,861 registered blogs and a combined RSS reach of 12,697,713, I’m really excited to see the overall impact it’ll have.

But, to play the devil’s advocate for a minute, I know that some people think bloggers have the tendency to be conceited and that one post is no substitute for staging a protest or sending an angry letter to Congress. Does participating in Blog Action Day really mean that you should be able to post one blog and then sleep soundly the other 364 days? No, but I don’t think that is what we’re trying to do. It’s about giving those who do want to make a difference a starting point and a place to collaborate. It’s about raising money for a worthwhile charity. And it’s about taking a moment of virtual silence by taking a small amount of time out of a busy day to remind the world, as well as ourselves, that helping the environment is important.

Blog Action Day, Congress, Eastwick, Ireland, Mary Robinson, Sustainable Community Action, wiki

Even before its “inception” into the business world, Facebook had taken a lot of heat for a wide variety of reasons, most of which were really frivolous. If you don’t want your profile to be searchable, change your privacy settings. If you’re a student who is infuriated that even your parents can now have an account and you long for the happier, simpler days of the early Facebook, check out College.com instead. Usually I’m all for letting people express their opinions, but these complaints were getting ridiculous.

Then, this summer, or as Dave McClure called it in a guest post on TechCrunch, the “Summer of Facebook,” brought about some more serious accusations. One such example was when a slew of media, including the Wall Street Journal, put out a story based on a study by Sophos which reported that 41 percent of Facebook users were willing to divulge personal information to a complete stranger – enough so that identity theft could become a fairly effortless task. Finally, my attention had been caught, so I did my due diligence by revisiting my privacy settings page, renewing my personal vow to never accept someone as a “friend” that I didn’t know, and that was that.

An issue also arose when the creators of ConnectU announced that they were suing the creators of Facebook for supposedly stealing their idea. Was it a brilliant attempt at getting fifteen minutes of fame or was their ire the real deal? We have yet to find out, so I’ll move on…

Now it’s Fall and the weather is cooling down, but the wars against Facebook are continuing to heat up. This year, all 50 state attorneys general called for sites like Facebook and MySpace to improve their safeguards. However, New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo has taken it one step further with a sting attack and a subpoena, asking that Facebook reveal documents relating to the site’s security.

In August, Cuomo’s office set up a profile for a fictitious teenage girl, and after just a week, a 24-year old man had sent her a Facebook message asking for “nude pics.” The investigator then sent a message to Facebook while posing as this girl’s mother, asking that this man’s profile be removed as promised by the site. A month later, his profile was still there. So much for being a self-proclaimed “trusted environment.”

I do have to wonder about this fictitious profile, though. Was the profile photo racy? Were the messages somehow solicited? Did Cuomo’s office apply any privacy settings? I’ve had a profile on Facebook since 2005 and have never been the recipient of a sexually inappropriate message. In fact, I haven’t been spammed by anyone on Facebook… not even once. So, you never know.

This is all very complicated, but in the end, it comes down to a very simple concept: When a company or product is scrutinized this much, it usually means that a lot of people really care about what they’re doing, which is a good thing. Even though they’ve been presented with many hurdles, Facebook has always landed on both legs, and still running.

Andrew M. Cuomo, College.com, ConnectU, Dave McClure, Facebook, MySpace, New York Attorney General, Online Communities, social networks, Sophos, Techcrunch, Wall Street Journal

In case you haven’t picked up on this little fact about yours truly from the subject matter of my blog, I am a huge proponent of social networks. I most recently spoke out about how it seemed imprudent that some companies have blocked their employees from them on a post entitled Facebook: Friend or Foe. This subject is something I’ve thought about and been bothered by; it’s just so incredibly counterproductive! However, the following audio podcast by CNN’s Senior Business Correspondent, Ali Velshi, has helped me see that there is in fact a funny side to this issue. It even mentions Eastwick’s neighbors, Google: 

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Ali Velshi, CNN, Facebook, Google, Online Communities, social networks

Okay, this is just getting ridiculous.  Each morning, I eat an apple and read daily e-mails sent to me from Online Media Daily so I can get my dose of Web 2.0 news (and fiber).  I enjoy this ritual, as it’s a perfect opportunity to read up on all the latest online trends.  However, today something was different.  As I innocently opened my inbox, I immediately received a shock: three of the four stories in the e-mail were about Facebook.  Are you… kidding me?!?

Here are the articles, because otherwise I wouldn’t believe it, either:

- Tech Giants Poke Around Facebook, USA Today

- In Facebook, Investing in a Theory, New York Times

- Don’t Give Google Double the Power, San Francisco Chronicle

- The Three Potential Causes of Facebook’s Death, Wired

Don’t get me wrong, I love Facebook.  And really, why should I bother writing about anything else when everyone is so magnetically drawn to the social site?

Well, question-I-just-asked-myself-and-now-I’m-going-to-answer, because there actually is other news, not only on a national and international scale, but locally, too.  Now I didn’t expect this to be an easy pill to swallow for some of you tech geeks, so I’m going to spend the rest of this post writing about a few other local news tidbits (both tech and otherwise) that I’ve found to be of interest this week.

My mother actually gets all the credit for showing me this first story.  After venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki turned down funding for companies that became stock market sensations, such as Yahoo! and Google (who needs yet another search engine, right?), he decided to try something new to learn more about Web 2.0.  The San Jose Mercury News chronicles his adventures in starting Truemors, a site based on user submissions that allows Web surfers to read “true rumors” about anything you can imagine – tech, entertainment, politics, sports, etc.  Users also have the option of moving an especially intriguing story to the “Greatest” page, as well as sending something to the dumpster if they think it really is just a rumor.

Says the Merc, “He imagined his average reader as a Google programmer who was about to go on a date with an East Bay non-profit activist.  What would they talk about?  Truemors could help.”

Moving to sports news (since I have a huge crush on him I’ve got to include this), San Francisco 49ers quarterback Alex Smith separated his throwing shoulder when he was sacked by 308-pound Seattle defensive tackle Rocky Bernard.  Ouch.  However, the silver lining to this tragedy, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, is that doctors are saying they don’t think Smith will need surgery at this point, which means he’ll be able to get back into the game sooner.  Get well soon, Alex Smith!

Looking at hard news, the San Jose Mercury News ran a story that included Eastwick client Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence.  Since I’ve been working on this account, my eyes have been opened (and quite often teary) to the terrible circumstances surrounding domestic violence.  Think this serious issue doesn’t affect you, your community and your business?  Think again.  According to NDS, domestic violence has been estimated to cost employers in the United States $3-$13 billion each year, including health care expenses, lost productivity, etc.

Well, that’s all for now, folks.  I know when you live in the bubble of Silicon Valley, it can be easy to get sucked into an “it” trend and not pay attention to anything else.  I’m no exception – for fifty percent of my work day, I live and breathe anything Web 2.0.  But, it’s always nice to have a reminder now and again that there are in fact other events and occurrences going on up and down the Silicon Valley.

Alex Smith, Eastwick, Facebook, Google, Guy Kawasaki, New York Times, Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence, Online Communities, Online Media Daily, Rocky Bernard, San Francisco 49ers, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, Seattle, Silicon Valley, social networks, Truemors, USA Today, Web 2.0, Wired, Yahoo

Don’t get me wrong, I’m just as addicted to Facebook as the next quasi tech geek, but in the name of “giving it a rest,” since I do in fact have other obsessions (this week, its NetVibes and Timbaland), I’m going to switch gears for a post.

In an effort to boost our numbers and reenergize some of our bloggers who’ve let posting fall to the wayside, each Eastwick blogger has been registered to participate in Blog Action Day. This nonprofit initiative encourages bloggers to help generate awareness about the worsening state of the environment by posting with reference to the environment on October 15^th.

“We want to display the potential and the power of the blogging community, which is a disparate community but one with an amazing size, breadth and diversity. By bringing everyone together for one day, we can see just how much can be achieved, and how much we can be heard,” said Collis Ta’eed, an Australian blogger from FreelanceSwitch.com, and a cofounder of Blog Action Day.

As of today, 6,380 blogs are registered, but Technorati now tracks nearly 100 million blogs with nearly 200,000 new ones added every day, so think of what a difference we as bloggers can make!

Here is another reason I’m so excited about this initiative – for the thirty days immediately following Blog Action Day, Eastwick has very generously pledged to make a donation to the National Wildlife Federation based on the number of pageviews generated by the posts on Eastwick’s blogs. National Wildlife Federation, or NWF, works to educate and inspire Americans to conserve and restore wildlife for the benefit of our future generations. Sounds like a cause worth blogging for to me!

I’m pretty sure I could spend a whole day talking about how excited I am for the ides of October, which could be because I’ll be blogging for a good cause or simply because I’ll have an excuse to blog more often, but I’ll spare you (for now) and get to the bottom line. If you don’t read the Eastwick blogs for the content, come visit next month, anyway, because it’s possibly the easiest and most pain free way to help a wonderful cause.

Blog Action Day, Collis Taeed, Eastwick, Facebook, FreelanceSwitch.com, National Wildlife Federation, NetVibes, Online Communities, Technorati, Timbaland

Green tech was so last month.

Seriously, quit gasping and finger wagging, or I swear I will turn this blog around.

I’m not suggesting that PR people shouldn’t pitch their clients’ stories of solar powered Wi-Fi or hydrogen fuel cells anymore, because I think companies who “go green” are wonderful! I’m just saying the wave has been caught, ridden, and for the most part, is dangerously close to breaking on the sand and becoming nonexistent. This sounds like a bad thing, but my guess is that most companies don’t just want to help the environment for the media attention it gets them. If it is, then those companies have bigger issues to deal with, anyway. So let’s take a deep breath of that air with the reduced carbon emissions and move forward, because I’ve been holding out on you. You, my dear reader, are probably wondering what I think the media’s newest obsession is, and since I don’t want to make anyone sick with all the tension I’ve created, here it is: charity networks and networking.

Here is where all the jokes are going to end. Charity networks are everywhere, and I can’t get enough of hearing about them. I’ve blogged about Kevin Bacon’s Six Degrees of Separation and Insight by Business Objects and Zerofootprint, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg these days. A big announcement came last week when MTV announced that it would be launching a social network to encourage youth activism, called Think.MTV.com. MTV has always been known for providing youth with knowledge about current political and environmental issues, but MTV also encourages them to turn off the TV and go do something proactive and positive to make the world a better place to live. This being the case, Think.MTV.com is definitely a step in the right direction.

“It’s an issue of not knowing where to start,” said Ian Rowe, MTV Vice President of Public Affairs. “Global warming and genocide in Darfur issues are so huge it’s overwhelming.”

That’s putting it lightly.

Sometimes, especially when you’re young, it’s harder to get people to listen. Even when you’re grown and have everyone’s attention, you’re only one person. But now, anyone can help a good cause. For example, a good college friend of mine used a Facebook application to create a cause called “Stop Dog Fighting Now.” He didn’t work for a nonprofit, and the whole Michael Vick fiasco hadn’t yet begun. He was just your average guy who’s had dogs all his life and happened to strongly believe in putting an end to something truly tragic. Just months after its creation, the group has well over 310,000 members, and over $12,000. has been donated to the Pit Bull Rescue Central, with small fractions of the proceeds also going to Justgive.org and Project Agape. And suddenly, my friend is not just one person, anymore. I couldn’t be happier for him.

Likewise, my colleague Joel and I have been working with Youth and Family Enrichment Services (YFES) to create a presence on Facebook by creating a group and a cause. We’re just starting to promote the group, so if you’ve got a Facebook account, check them out! The amazing thing about this nonprofit is the variety of programs they have and people they help. Just about everyone, somewhere throughout the course of his or her lifetime, has had to endure being or knowing someone who is dealing with substance abuse, domestic violence, mental health, relationship and communication issues. YFES can help people in all of these predicaments, which is very admirable, and definitely a cause worth supporting.

It is my hope that as time goes on, the overall interest in charity networking will stay strong and not go the way of the dinosaur like Tamagotchis, pet rocks and boy bands.

boy bands, Business Objects, charity networking, charity networks, communication issues, domestic violence, Facebook, green tech, hydrogen fuel cells, Ian Rowe, Insight, Justgive.org, Kevin Bacon, mental health, Michael Vick, MTV, Online Communities, pet rocks, Pit Bull Rescue Central, Project Agape, relationship, six degrees of separation, social networks, solar powered Wi Fi, Stop Dog Fighting Now, substance abuse, Tamagotchis, Think.MTV.com, YFES, Youth and Family Enrichment Services, Zerofootprint