Teenager in rail suicide was sent abusive message on social networking site

Det Sgt Erwin said Natasha, who was part of a close-knit group of 10 friends
at Worcester’s Royal Grammar School, then sent back a message on Formspring
asking: “Who are you?”

It also emerged during the hearing that Natasha, whose parents had separated,
came home from school in tears around two weeks before her death, saying she
did not have any friends.

Det Sgt Erwin told the hearing that officers had spoken to some of Natasha’s
friends in the days following her death and had found that she also had a
“disagreement” on Facebook on Feb 13.

After the jury ruled that the schoolgirl had taken her own life, her parents,
Andrew and Jane MacBryde, said they believed anonymous messages on
Formspring had played a significant role in the events leading up to her
death.

The statement, issued by British Transport Police, said: “As a family, we
continue to deal daily with the impact that the terrible loss of Tasha has
had on all of our lives. She was a bright and beautiful girl whose smile and
sparkle lit up not only our world, but also that of her friends and all who
knew her.”

The family added that the inquest had been “an agonising process”, but had
allowed them to feel closer to their daughter.

“We believe that the evocative lyrics of one of her favourite songs, Grenade
by Bruno Mars, coupled with access to certain websites suggesting such
actions, caused her to make such a sudden drastic and uncharacteristic
decision,” they said. “The family believes that the anonymous postings on
the Formspring social networking website were a significant contributor to
the events on Feb 13, and we seek to understand the motivation of those who
choose to send spiteful and vindictive messages to their peers. We can only
hope that lessons have been learned.” Formspring is a question and answer
based social website that allows users to ask questions about other users.
It has been accused of encouraging cyber-bullying due to the anonymity of
entries.

Last March, Alexis Pilkington, 17, committed suicide in New York after
insulting comments about her were posted on the site in the days leading up
to her death.

Share and Enjoy

Google Plus steadily gaining ground in social networking space

BOSTON: Google’s latest offering ‘ Google Plus’ is steadily gaining ground in the social networking space, so far dominated by Facebook , with the internet giant’s social network attracting about 20 million visitors in the initial three weeks and nearly half of these visitors hailing from US and India .

According to estimates by research firm ComScore, Google Plus had 19.93 million unique visitors between June 29 and July 19 period.

The top two countries in this estimate are the US and India. Of the 19.93 million visitors, 5.31 million were from the US and 2.85 million from India.

Another 0.87 million users came from the UK, 0.71 million from Germany and 0.50 million from France.

“I have never seen anything grow this quickly,” vice president of industry analysis at ComScore Andrew Lipsman said.

Google Plus, launched on June 28, is Google’s answer to rival Facebook.

It lets users post photos, messages, comments and other content from a selected groups of friends.

The service was started as a field trial and the project is by invitation only, which means people can join only if a current member invites them.

Eventually, Google plans to incorporate features of Google Plus in its other services, such as its YouTube video site.

Google CEO Larry Page had last week said that Google Plus had more than 10 million users.

Page said there are “more opportunities for Google today than ever before”.

It will be some time before Google catches up with Facebook’s scale of more than 750 million users. The other popular micro-blogging site Twitter has more than 200 million registered accounts.

Through ‘Google Plus’, the internet giant aims to garner a share in the lucrative social networking space that has so far been dominated by the Mark Zuckerberg led popular site.

The service has features like ‘Circles’, ‘Sparks’, ‘Hangouts’ and ‘mobile’.

Through Circles, Google targets Facebook’s features in which a user’s information is shared by default with a large number of his or her friends including their work colleagues and acquaintances, rather than only their close personal friends.

Its “Huddle” feature lets users send text messages to several different people at once, known as group texting.

Share and Enjoy