I found out yesterday that someone who I didn't know in real-life, but had "known" online for 6 years, has died. There was a real outpouring of grief on the message board where he had been posting for so long - very strange as these posters are among the most cynical people in the world!

There's a section of people for whom this is a major event, what used to be called a "water-cooler moment". One of the things this illustrates to me as a PR Manager is that the web has its own concerns that can be utterly separate to the conventional news agenda and PRs need to be careful before they go blundering into online communities.