formspring.me

http://about.formspring.me/

What is formspring.me?





The Hazards of Formspring and Cyberbullying



About Formspring

Through conversational Q&A, Formspring helps you express yourself and learn more about the people you care about.

With over 900 million questions answered already, Formspring is giving people across the globe a new way to connect and express themselves. Just like a good conversation in person, Formspring helps our 16 million users do what comes naturally: ask questions and give answers, about anything and everything. Our community is driven by a curiosity about what people think, what they know, where they’ve been, and what matters to them. From college students and interior designers to athletes, journalists, musicians and your friends and family: our community is made up of millions of people who all have something unique to share.
How does Formspring work?

Formspring is as simple as starting a conversation – you ask a question of a friend or someone you want to know more about, and they answer. And vice versa. It’s a fun and easy way to connect with people you know or people you want to know more about, and for your friends to learn more about you.

Getting started on Formspring is really simple. First, you set up an account. During the set up process, you can find friends already on Formspring through your favorite social networks. After that, you can begin asking questions, either anonymously or openly. You’ll get a notice when you get a new question from a contact, and you can choose whether or not to answer it. Lastly, you can easily link up your Formspring account with other websites, so more of your friends and contacts can learn about you, and ask you more questions.
Why did you create Formspring?

In many ways, our users helped us create Formspring. Just eight months ago, Formspring grew out of another company called Formstack, which creates online forms used by companies and organizations that want to get to know their users and customers better. Back in the Summer of 2009, we noticed that bloggers were beginning to use Formstack’s forms to let their readers ask them questions. Pretty soon, tens of thousands of people were using our forms to share information, insights and learn about one another. We took note and realized that people were desperate for a new way to connect and learn about each other. With this in mind, we launched Formspring.me in November 2009. Today, there are over 16 million accounts on Formspring asking millions of questions every day.
Why does Formspring allow anonymity?

Anonymity on Formspring is a choice, and an important one for many people who want to ask questions of superiors, colleagues, organizations or even celebrities without their identity revealed. When you set up your profile, you can select whether you want to receive anonymous questions or not. If you do choose to allow anonymous questions on your profile and don’t like the questions you’re asked, you can delete the question or block the user. If a question crosses the line and is inappropriate, please help us keep our community safe and fun by reporting abuse to us

（中央社記者顏伶如波特蘭6日專電）美國麻州一名中學女生今年初不堪遭受「網路霸凌」而自殺後，青少年網路行為備受關注。

新興網站Formspring匿名發問功能吸引某些美國青少年用來對同學大肆誹謗攻訐，引起家長與老師憂心。

網站全名為Formspring.me的社群網站去年11月才推出，不過短短幾個月馬上爆紅，據統計，每個月平均有高達2800萬造訪人次，其中有一半的造訪人次來自美國。

這個許多家長都還沒聽過的網站，由於擁有匿名發問的功能而廣受美國青少年喜愛。

比方說，談論某位女同學胸罩尺寸、感情八卦等話題，發問者可以不透露自己身份，因此甚至有青少年利用這個網站大肆對別的同學誹謗攻訐，至於無端遭受批評的受害者，則不一定能掌握究竟謾罵攻擊的導火線源頭到底出自哪一個人。

Formspring帳號可以免費申請，加入之後可以與「推特」（Twitter）或「臉書」（Facebook）帳號聯結。使用者可以在不透露自己身份的匿名保護下，透過Formspring功能向眾多網友發問問題，或者回應別人提出的問題。

根據媒體報導，由於Formspring的發問與回應均可匿名，不雅、不敬甚至惡意中傷的詞彙隨處可見，例如「妳長得好醜」、「妳交的男友都超醜」等等，使得「網路霸凌」（Cyberbullying）案例在這?媦h出不窮。

「紐約時報」（New York Times）報導，新澤西州（Kinnelon）金納隆一名中學的輔導老師達克（MaggieDock）便說：「這個網站上完全沒有正面的東西，一絲一毫也沒有，但孩子們似乎根本無法不去看它，就算別人把他們講得很難聽也是一樣。」

達克說，她曾詢問一名女同學「如果碰到別人扔石頭，妳會怎麼辦？」，這名女生的回答是會跑開或避開，但在現實生活中，這名女同學卻沒辦法不去看網路上別人對她所發表的閒言閒語。