German teen shooter's threat in chatroom

The 17-year-old German boy who killed 15 people and then himself this week warned about his plans "in an Internet chat room six hours before" he went on a shooting spree in his former high school, the Associated Press reported. The message he posted was seen by "a teen in the neighboring state of Bavaria. The Bavarian teen told his father and then police about the chat when he realized the threat had been real." But police didn't have enough time to locate the boy, apparently. The school, however, had fortunately done some training in case an incident like this should happen. "Authorities said they found some 60 shell casings in the school and that the number of victims could have been much higher had educators and police not carried out a plan learned in an earlier training program preparing them to respond to such a shooting." Pls see the article for details about the boy and the school's warning system. Here's coverage at the New York Times.

German social networking

Social networking is happening pretty much wherever there's a Web, but the picture looks a little different in each country. Fresh comScore research found that 45% of Germany's 32.9 online people (14.8m) visited social-networking sites in July, the latest figure available. As for the where they socialize, the Top 10 sites were: MySpace (3.6 million), studiVZ (3.1m), jux (2.6m), Piczo (2m), StayFriends (1.3m), Netlog (1.2m), Sevenload (1.1m), Xing (685,000), Skyrock Network (507,000), and MSN (440,000), as listed on BlogNation. Facebook, in at least the Top 3 in the US and UK, came in 11th in Germany last summer (177,000 visitors).