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Net Gains (Sep 03, 97) |
Logging in was not so much trouble, it being a lazy Sunday afternoon,
and the first stop was Yahoo ! (www.yahoo.com). Yahoo! had a special
bold headline right at the top of the page that led to a special
section dedicated to WWW pages about the late Princess Di (http://www.yahoo.com/Regional/Countries/United_Kingdom/ Society_and_Culture/Royalty/Princess_Diana/).
These links led to leading news web sites like CNN, & MSNBC,
and to other sites dedicated to Princess Di.
Following some of these links showed the human side of the Net
- the owner of one of the web pages listed there suspended his
site since it was a light hearted look at Diana, and felt that
it was not appropriate. This was done within minutes of the news
breaking out (http://www.fincher.demon.co.uk/DiPage1.html)
Another site - Club Di (http://www.royalnetwork.com/clubdi/) turned
its pages black as a sign of mourning, while "God Save the
Queen" played on continuously in the background.
There were other sites that decided to make money out of this
tragedy - for different reasons. One link from the initial Yahoo
! listing (http://www.aquanet.co.il/web/bartal/diana1.html) -
had put up a modified version of a poem by W. H. Auden. They were
charging a minimum of US $14.95 for a "Princess Pictorial
Tour", which was to be contributed to Diana's favourite charity
- Cancer Research.
Conspiracy Theory (http://www.navigation-station.com/princess-diana-conspiracy1.htm)
is another site out to make money - but not for the coffers of
any charity. For US$ 9.95, they offered surfers a chance to get
the low down on all sorts of conspiracies (silly ones if you ask
me) propounded by netheads all over the world. The depths people
go to, just to make money !
The CNN pages (cnn.com) on Di had the main story along with sound
bites of three eyewitnesses. There were related items and stories
like the text of the doctor's announcement of Di's death, an image
gallery, and key dates in her life - right from her birth on July
1, 1961, through her wedding, affairs, divorce, and death on August
31, 1997.
MSNBC (www.msnbc.com) had an interactive slideshow on Diana, and
a special bulletin board for readers to add their comments on
the entire incident. From serious condolences to inane suggestions
that this was a faked death to avoid public spotlight, this page
had it's share of surfer's contributions.
The most surprising thing though were the memorial sites that
had sprung up in a matter of hours. The counter on one memorial
page - http://www.holoworld.com/www/pages/di/index.html showed
that 1,08,451 mourners around the world had logged in to chat
about her death. Chat rooms were filled with gaalis galore
for the paparazzi. Memorial.Net, another site (http://www.memorial.net/diana/memorial/)
had over 50 messages posted in the five minutes that I was surfing
that site.
Keep in mind that all these pages were created just that morning, and had managed to attract so many surfers - surfers who had turned to the Net for more information, to share their feelings, to join others and publicly mourn Lady Di's tragic death. This is what they mean when they say that the Web is interactive. This is just one of the many ways that the Net scores over conventional media.
She's finally got her peace. Princess Diana - R.I.P.
Some more memorial pages :