• by Masha Geller , September 13, 2001

Many of our readers responded to my column yesterday. Some agreed that the web let us down in terms of providing information on what was going on around us, some emphasized that email and instant messenger were saving graces on the day of chaos none of us will ever forget. More importantly, however, all agreed that the web can help us through the aftermath. If we all pitch in.

The first corporate altruism story of the day came out of Amazon.com. The giant e-retailer's pages are usually littered with ads, but today the majority of their homepage is occupied by a simple box directing visitors to make a donation to the American Red Cross Relief Fund. The message told visitors they can make a contribution of $1 to $50 and by midday the site was reporting that almost half a million dollars had been donated, from more than 17,000 people.

Similarly, Yahoo! is running an effort on its front page designed to encourage visitors to contribute via links and secure transactional links to the Red Cross, the New York Blood Center, and other relief groups.

Another company, i7Interactive - http://www.i7interactive.com - turned directly to website publishers and asked them to utilize their existing traffic to direct visitors to the Red Cross or Helping.org websites. As a result, Goto.com has pulled down all of their existing banners and replaced them with the i7 Red Cross banners, accounting for millions of impressions for Helping.org. Many more websites have joined the effort.

John Park, CEO of i7 Interactive, Inc. said, "As everyone knows the Internet Industry has been hit hard in the past year and for the people of this Industry to sacrifice their advertising traffic without any hesitation is remarkable.

And last but not least, I just received the same email from several different sources, and thought it might be appropriate to pass it on to you: "Friday Night at 7:00 p.m. step out your door, stop your car, or step out of your establishment and light a candle. We will show the world that Americans are strong and united together against terrorism. The message: WE STAND UNITED - WE WILL NOT TOLERATE TERRORISM. Please pass this to everyone on your email list. We need to reach everyone across the United States quickly. Thank you."