Ch02 Part 3-3  - Community and networks

NOTES

RESEARCH

• Making Connections

# Korean social networking site Cyworld

o Businessweek 25 Sept 2005  - http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_39/b3952405.htm " What is Cyworld, exactly? It's an Internet service that lets people create their own home pages -- pages that can accommodate an unlimited numbers of photos, documents, and other goodies. It's similar to U.S. social networking sites such as MySpace or The Facebook, but with extra twists that make it more realistic and alluring. Home pages, for example, appear three-dimensional. Users decorate their "rooms" with digital furniture, art, TVs, even music. Since avatars stop by, the idea is to make your space as cool as possible. Instant messaging is included in the service, so you can chat with visitors. You can even enter Cyworld from a mobile phone."

# Korean / Asian social networking

o CNN article 01 Oct 2007 - http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/09/29/eosk.dayinlife/index.html - "Still, it's the kids who most actively embrace the bleeding-edge technologies. This peek into the everyday life of an imaginary South Korean boy named Insoo Kim offers insight into what the life of youths in the rest of the world might be like in the near future." By Chang-Won Kim is the co-CEO of the Korean blog software company TNC. He is also an active blogger, conference organizer and speaker, born-again Christian, environmentalist and typical sport-loving guy.

o Chang-Won Kim  blogs at http://www.web20asia.com/; About - http://www.web20asia.com/notice - "Hi, my name is Chang. (FYI, my full name in Korean is Chang-Won Kim.) I've started writing this blog since early 2006 I'm writing this blog as a hobby - My full-time job is the co-CEO of Korea's leading blog software company, TNC. My primary role as the co-CEO is to take the company to the global market and to develope new services. As of this writing I'm staying in Tokyo, Japan to do a client project and also to find a new web/mobile opportunity in Japan. For more information including my more resume-ish profile, check out my first post below."

# China

o China Web 2.0 Review - http://www.cwrblog.net/ - "China Web2.0 Review is a blog dedicated to track web2.0 development, review and profile web2.0 applications, business and services in China."

o One of the writers on China Web 2.0 Review - Luyi Chen - http://www.chenluyi.com/index.php/about/ -

"Luyi Chen 陈璐艺

PhD Student, EE, Shanghai Jiaotong University

lychen1109@gmail.com

Cellphone: 13917475470

I am now pursuing a PhD degree in Communication and Information System. My current research interest is in digital audio distribution and protection technology. I am also specializing in metadata-based content filtering.

2nd Chinese Blogger Conference will be held on Oct 28 and 29 in Hangzhou. I am the press guy of the conference. If you are media person, visit the press page for latest information. Also check the conference blog.

Sept. 24, Barcamp Shanghai, first such kind of unconference in China, was held in Tudou’s office. I was one of the organizers.

Recently I started writing on China Web2.0 Review. This is one of the best blogs covering new technology. I am happy to put my name with it.

This summer, we held Stanford Asia Technology Initiative Conference 2006 in Zhangjiang Park. I am one of the organizers. I also hosted the conference website here."

o Virtual China - http://www.virtual-china.org/ -

o Ogilvy China Digital Watch blog - http://digitalwatch.ogilvy.com.cn/en/?page_id=2

"where Ogilvy China’s digital folks can share some of our observations, musings, and insights about the rapidly changing landscape of digital media in China, and a place where we can hear from our peers in the industry, from entrepreneurs, from clients and from anyone interested in new media in China. We hope you’ll all come frequently to swap ideas with us, to ask questions, and to share your own views.

"Digital Watch will cover a wide range of digital media: display advertising, search and keyword marketing, Internet video advertising, IPTV, the mobile Internet, digital music marketing, the out-of-home digital display market, 2D barcodes, online games, virtual worlds, gadgets, widgets, and just about anything else found growing at the crossroads of marketing and technology."

# Foreign investment into China's social networking sites

o Reuters 10 May 2007 - http://www.reuters.com/article/newIssuesNews/idUSSHA28715120070510?pageNumber=1 - "Chinese social networking sites -- the most well-known among them 51.com, Tudou.com and Rox.com.cn -- have benefited from a wave of foreign venture capital which has poured into the world's second-largest Web market following Google Inc.'s (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) purchase of YouTube last year."

o Intel investment in China's social networking site 51.com -  Intel press release 10 May 2007 - http://www.intel.com/capital/news/releases/070510_51Com.htm - ""China's internet economy, with its 137 million users, is only second to the U.S. We foresee great potential for continued growth. Social networking web sites in particular are growing at unprecedented pace in China, with consumers demanding unique local flavor." said Cadol Cheung, Managing Director, Intel Capital Asia Pacific. "51.com represents a fast-growing new wave of growth engines for China's Internet and IT ecosystems.""

• Breaking Connections

# Indian students and suicide

"addiction to surfing, gaming and blogging was affecting students' performance, making them reclusive and even suicidal"

 

"Depression and dysfunctional lifestyles are known to be common among IIT students, and at least nine have committed suicide in the past five years. IIT-Mumbai has seen two suicides in two years and several attempts."

 

# Suicide pacts via the internet

o suicide pacts in Japan between strangers - British Medical Journal 2004 - http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/329/7478/1298

"What is unusual is that these pacts seem to have been arranged between strangers who met over the internet and planned the tragedy via special suicide websites. This is in contrast to traditional suicide pacts, in which the victims are people with close relationships."

 

" The potential negative role of the internet in relation to suicides has been highlighted previously.¹² An increasing number of websites graphically describe suicide methods, including details of doses of medication that would be fatal in overdose. Such websites can perhaps trigger suicidal behaviour in predisposed individuals, particularly adolescents.¹³ Cybersuicide refers to suicides or suicide attempts influenced by the internet. Scientific literature on cybersuicide mainly pertains to solitary suicides, and little information exists about the internet and suicide pacts."

 

o suicide pacts in Japan

- BBC news report 07 Dec 2004 - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4071805.stm

 

" "Last night I was up all night," said Naoki, smiling again, "talking online to this woman who really - I mean really - wants to die. She asked me to do it with her today, but I said I couldn't because I had this television crew coming to see me. So she said we can do it after they've gone.""

 

 

- Also http://www.ip97.com/more_die_in_japan_internet_suicide_bj.aspx - Internet News Unlimited - Nov 2004

 

"The cases appeared to be the latest in a string of group suicides in Japan, some of which have involved strangers who met over the internet to die together."

 

"Japan has the highest suicide rate in the industrialised world, a phenomenon often linked to the lack of cultural taboo about suicide but reluctance to discuss it openly. /// Suicide rates have picked up since the economy began to slump in the 1990s, as the once unthinkable idea of economic insecurity has taken hold. Japan registered a record high of 34 427 suicides in 2003."

 

 o police traget internet suicide sites - 07 Oct 2005 - http://www.physorg.com/news7046.html

" On Wednesday Japan's national police agency announced guidelines requiring Internet providers and telecommunications groups to report any postings they find on the Internet about potential suicides. The police emphasized the need for quick action when the supposed date of the suicide is indicated or if the location or method of killing oneself is indicated."

 

o Japanese man arrested re suicide site - 11 Oct 2007 - Associated Press - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21232873/

"Nishizawa contacted the suspect through an Internet suicide site he hosted and paid him $1,700, according to the official."

# How to guides re suicide via the internet

o Australia plans law against promoting suicide on internet - Australasian BioEthics Information newsletter 11 April 2003 - http://www.australasianbioethics.org/Newsletters/070-2003-04-11.html

"Promoting suicide through the internet will become a crime in Australia with fines of up to A$110,000, under new laws introduced by the Federal Government."

 

Euthanasia supporters protest.

 

Check if that law has now been passed and any consequences arising from that eg. anyone prosecuted under that law?

o  learning ways to kill yourself via the Internet - India and Japan - Economist 21 Jun 2007 -  http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9370744

"But one new trend that is clearly pushing the real incidence of suicide up is the growing use of the internet to learn about, plan or even encourage self-killing. "

# blogs/ social networks and murder

o Japanese girl blogs about murdering mother

- New York Times 04 Nov 2005 - http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E2D9173EF937A35752C1A9639C8B63&fta=y

 

"A 16-year-old girl has been arrested with trying to kill her mother with rat poison while she kept an Internet blog narrating her progress over three months, news reports said this week."

 

- Independent 03 Nov 2005 - http://www.independent.ie/world-news/asia/today-i-gave-mum-more-poison----blogger-reveals-murder-plot-228823.html

 

The girl, who is from rural Shizuoka, was apparently inspired by Graham Young, Britain's notorious 'Teacup Poisoner' who, in 1962, aged 14, slowly killed his stepmother with what was thought to be the same lethal substance.

 

...

 

"The girl's blog has been removed from the internet but extracts apparently copied from it survive on other Japanese websites.

 

"It's a bright, sunny day today, and I administered a delivery of acetic thallium," the girl wrote in August. "The man in the pharmacy didn't realise he had sold me such a powerful drug."

 

Other entries attempt to match the meticulously scientific style of Young's macabre diary, where he transcribed in detail the effects of each poison he administered and weighed up whether his subjects should live or die in excruciating pain.

 

Her blog mentioned rashes on the victim's body and problems with her breathing.

 

The girl goes on to report her mother's hallucinations and other agonies, before criticising the small size of her life insurance policy."

 

o Murder on MySpace - Wired Magazine article - Dec 2006 - http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.12/murderblog.html

"In the days and weeks that followed, Deanne Bays followed a path familiar to families involved in a violent crime – she sobbed in grief and anger, numbly arranged a funeral, turned to friends for comfort. But Bays did it in two worlds at once – the virtual and the real. Bays suffered in private, but she also shared her pain on MySpace. The aftermath of the murders resonated through the social network – touching the investigating detectives, the lawyers and even the victims. Daniel Varo was dead, but he didn't disappear. He had lived so much of his life online that pieces of him lingered on the Web – a ghost in the machine."

 

o convicted peadophile blogs state of mind - BBC News 05 Jul 2005

"A convicted US paedophile found with a girl six weeks after her family was murdered revealed his state of mind in an internet blog, police have revealed."

 

 

o two teenagers on MySpace - he kills her parents - MSNBC 01 Dec 2005 - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10272868/

After murder, journalists and voyeurs found their MySpace profiles and left hate messages/ messages of support. Also tracked down their "friends" and left messages for them online.

"Would Kara's parents have talked to their daughter earlier if they'd known she was representing herself online as a 17-year-old who likes to party? Would they have been more aware of David's capacity for violence if they had seen the pictures on his blog?"

The article also refers to other events around the social networking site drawing campaigners, press etc:

"Earlier this summer, Zach Stark, a gay 16-year-old from Bartlett, Tenn., made headlines when he wrote in his MySpace blog about his parents' decision to send him to Camp Refuge, a camp aimed at setting homosexuals straight. Gay rights activists picked up on Zach's blog and rallied to his side, protesting the group running the camp, Love In Action. Earlier this month, a federal judge upheld the state of Tennessee's prosecution of Love In Action for running a mental health facility without a license.

And in September, New York college students Mellie Carballo and Maria Pesantez died in a well-reported wave of heroin overdoses. Both had MySpace profiles. Friends and strangers visited to leave notes of condolence, as well as a few scathing diatribes against the way heroin use had wasted two young lives. Both girls profiles' contained numerous drug references.

 

 

That same month, on the MySpace profile of 19-year-old Taylor Behl, friends and strangers posted pleas for the safe return of the Virginia college student before police made the gruesome discovery of her body."

 

...

 

"Hindsight is 20/20. What might look obvious to someone looking back on a profile now may have seemed innocuous before. But clearly, what MySpace and other social networking sites like it do provide are windows into the private and complex mind of a teenager. The pages are not always frivolous fun — they may also be a cry for help."

 o murder victim's family blog published by newspaper - The News & Observer 25 Dec 2005 -  http://www.newsobserver.com/576/story/381605.html

"What made the story more juicy is that everyone in the Berkley household kept an online journal, or Web log, of their daily lives. The N&O was able to tap those blogs to add lush detail to its reporting, including the online musings of Berkley the day before his death and of his two teenage children, Ezekiel, age 18, and Becky, 16."

...

"Can publication of online information be an invasion of privacy? The phenomenon of the Internet and blogging as an information resource is so recent that there's not much history or track record for newspapers to go by. One journalism professor who studies online publishing sees personal blogs as a perfectly appropriate information source for newspapers. "I think it's fair to use it," said Phil Meyer of UNC-Chapel Hill. "This is a bizarre case, and you need to get into the motivations of these people." He added, "I don't see the difference between (the information) being in the newspaper and being on the Internet, except it's more permanent on the Internet.""

 

o But you can't believe everything you read on blogs. Teen bloggers hires men to kill her mother, allegedly - MSNBC - Dateline - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13962555/ - Rachelle Waterman

"What Rachelle's family heard didn't seem possible of the smart, athletic girl they knew and loved. Every summer, Rachelle and her mom would spend weeks with Lauri's family in Tacoma, Washington."

 

But her blog entitled "My Crappy Life"  reveals a darker side - ""Don't you hate it when the little pieces of sh-- pile up to the point you're at the breaking point, and you want to scream and cry at the same time.""

 

After the trial, the jurors are reported as follows:

"And what about those stories, Rachelle's dramatic descriptions of abuse?

Larson: Did you guys believe at all that Lauri Waterman was hitting her with baseball bats and--

Mike Schwab: No.

Larson: Attempting to kill her and maybe sell her into prostitution?

Kelly Demars: No.

Mike Schwab: Absolutely not.

Larson: So are we to believe that Rachelle is like, some sort of compulsive liar?

Kelly Demars: Oh yeah. I would believe that."

 

Update section - no verdict, indictment thrown out, Rachelle released. "Rachelle's family found some comfort in one part of Rachelle's interrogation, played at trial, in which the teenager, without emotion, finally admitted she had exaggerated her stories of abuse -- those horrible stories that had set the murder in motion."

 

o Woman drives teen to suicide using fake MySpace identity - Online Journalism Review 16 Nov 2007 - http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/071116niles/

 

Steve Pokin of the St. Charles Journal broke the story of Megan Meier, a 13-year-old who had some trouble (like many teens) but was reportedly turning her life around, in part due to the friendship of a boy she'd met on MySpace. But when the buy turned on her, insulting her, Megan was devastated, then took her life.

The twist? The boy didn't exist. 'He' was the creation of the mother of one of the girl's former friends. But the Journal didn't name the woman, citing concerns for *her* teen daughter.

Jezebel and other bloggers went nuts, and soon, they'd uncovered the woman's name, her address, phone number and business registration records and plastered them all over the Web.

 # Facebook, the child murderer, crime and the BNP

o BNP - Vnunet.com - 02 Aug 2007 - "Vodafone has pulled its advertising from the Facebook social networking site after its ads appeared on the profile homepage for the British National

Party."

o Ian Huntley child murderer

- For the social set of the net - 29 Sep 2007 -  http://www.socialset.net/2007/09/29/anyone-can-join-facebook/ - "There’s been a small amount of hooha in the UK over the ‘fact’ that convicted child killer Ian Huntley has a Facebook profile.

Shadow Minister for Justice Edward Garnier led calls for Huntley’s page to be shut down.

He said: “This will disgust people. Facebook’s owners should act now.”"

- The People.co.uk - 23 Sep 2007 - http://www.people.co.uk/news/tm_headline=face-of-evil-book&method=full&objectid=19833424&siteid=93463-name_page.html - "Scheming child murderer Ian Huntley has secretly joined the Facebook website in a bid to cultivate new friends.///The jailed beast talked a deluded female admirer into setting up a page for him on the social networking site."

o PCPro - 03 Oct 2007 - http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/126954/facebook-forced-to-unmask-sex-offenders.html - "New Jersey State Attorney General Anne Milgram has subpoenaed Facebook to discover whether convicted sex offenders in the state have profiles on the popular social networking site."

o Organised crime online -  The Age, Australia - 23 Oct 2007 - http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/organised-crime-goes-to-the-top-in-online-attacks/2007/10/22/1192940985254.html - Criminals using social networks to send trojans to executives for industrial espionage

"Mr Sunner believes the criminals used the online networking site LinkedIn to generate the data and work out whom to target./// Social networks are being plundered," he says. "Facebook and MySpace aren't just a productivity nightmare, they are also a goldmine of data for the bad guys. They can profile a company structure using LinkedIn, get personal details from MySpace and Facebook, and use that data to construct a targeted attack."