Yarmouth online service overwhelmed after womans body found
Thursday 7th April 2011Overwhelming national interest in the discovery of Rebecca Goddens body in the Cotswolds forced Great Yarmouth agency TMS Media to temporarily suspend its online service which helps trace missing people.
Visitors to the www.missing-you.net site suddenly surged from around 1400 a day to more than 8500 as news spread that the young womans remains had been found, the second body to be recovered in that area.
Rebecca went missing in 2002 and her mother Karen Edwards last year posted a message on the Yarmouth-based Missing You website desperately trying to trace the whereabouts of the 28-year-old.
Once the body was discovered, there was unprecedented activity on our website, said TMS internet director Mike Murr, who created the service 13 years ago.
People were being referred there both from Facebook and Google using keywords like missing people, Wiltshire and, ultimately, Rebeccas name. The response was incredible and the service could not cope.
Ironically - although there are more than 40,000 messages on the site with new ones arriving every 10-15 minutes - we have been discussing the future of the site which is a time-consuming labour of love rather than a profit-maker.
We really need to find a sponsor to help keep it going. Its principal aim has always been to bring about thousands of happy reunions between people who thought they might never see each other again. Rebeccas story is an unusually tragic one.
Her mothers message, posted last year, said: Karen Edwards is trying to trace the location of Becky. She has been missing for eight years and I need to contact her or just to know that she is OK. Can anybody help?
Police discovered the young womans remains 17 miles from where Sian O'Callaghan was found dead last month.
More information from Mike Murr at TMS Media, 01493 662929.
www.tms-media.co.uk
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