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Written on 3rd April 2009
17 COMMENTS 
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Movie star Demi Moore reported a suicide attempt made on Twitter and appears to have genuinely saved someone’s life in the act.
The Twitterer, Sandieguy, twittered a number of times of her attempt to commit suicide but with little response. One of her ‘final’ tweets, directed at Moore, did however finally trigger a response after Moore retweeted it.
She posted:
“@mrskutcher getting a knife, a big one that is sharp. Going to cut my arm down the whole arm so it doesn’t waste time.”
The woman, based in the San Francisco area, was tracked down by Police and was reportedly unharmed, however she was taken into custody for an evaluation.
Moore posted to her profile
“It is my understanding that the situation was not a joke and that through the collective efforts here, action was taken to provide help,”
Moore’s husband, actor Ashton Kutcher, also twittered (more…)
Written on 21st November 2008
5 COMMENTS
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
After the awful news of the suicide live on streaming site Justin.tv yesterday, there has obviously been much discussion across the web. Tom Davis, Founder of YCombinator startup TicketStumbler, took it upon himself to post what can only be called a highly inappropriate joke on YCombinator’s Hacker News site.
It started with this message (I have intentionally not re-posted here) which immediately caused large scale condemnation from other members of the site. For those of you who aren’t regular visitors to Hacker News, comments work similarly to how Digg’s do – other members can vote comments or up or down. One member commented that they would not be using TicketStumbler.com in the future and as you can see below, a number of other members agreed.
Approximately 7 hours later Davis makes a public apology, which can be read below:
I would like to take a moment to publicly apologize for what I said in the Justin.tv thread. If you’ve decided to hate me forever, haven’t read it, or simply aren’t of the opinion that it’s a big deal you may stop reading now.
Upon returning home, I read a message from Dan (my co-founder) stating that, in hindsight, he felt it was a bad thing to say and, quote, “I feel sick to my stomach.” I knew then that no matter how serious I felt the infraction was, I had try my damnedest to clear it up. (more…)
Written on 25th September 2008
8 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
When Loic Le Meur pitched Seesmic to Holland’s most talented cross media talents, he also told them how he handled a suicide announcement on his video service. Quite an interesting story, so I figured I’d share it with you.
Le Meur was in his San Francisco-based office, watching a big LCD screen where the desperate person was depicted. “People emailed us that he looked very serious”, Le Meur said, “the guy was about to kill himself, what do you do?”
So while hundreds of Seesmic members tried to convince the man to not kill himself by posting comments on his videos, Le Meur called his lawyers. “We’re a US-based company after all”. They advised him to call the police, which Le Meur did.
“We gave the police his IP address. After twenty minutes, they knocked on his door somewhere in the middle of the US”. An interesting example of a case where security is more important than privacy.
Update: check out Loic’s comment, he actually gave the email address.
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