2 Women Create The Anonymous Social Site
I’m a mother of 4 from Wisconsin living in the Costa Rican jungle in ahouse on a hilltop overlooking the ocean. I've commented on FB about themonkeys in the trees, the toucans, and the sweet ocean breezes I feelwhile I lay on my hammock. My FB friends of course commented how jealousthey were and how lucky I was to be living in paradise."Must be nice to have a perfect life".Right……well, not exactly.There were the things I never put on FB …… how I lost my job and myhusband couldn't find one. We were living with hardly any money and foodfor months and no one there to help. One day I reached rock bottom anddidn't feel like life would ever be good again.I realized around that time that my life had two sides and I could onlyshow one side on FB. Let's face it, no one wants to hear about someone'sissues on the newsfeed, it's just not socially acceptable. It's like beingin a room full of people chatting about the weather and someone startstalking about their messy divorce. It's just not done.Where do you turn when you have no one to talk to about your problems?Where can you vent about your bad day?I realized I'm not the only one with difficulties in my life. Everyone hasproblems and lots of us don't want to dump on our friends. FB needs aplace where anyone can talk about whatever they need to talk about.Not just what we had for dinner… or the awesome party we went to last night.Let's GET REAL So I thought, I'm going to do something about this! I am going to make awebsite or place on FB where you can be yourself and vent about anything!Anonymously. How does a woman with 2 toddlers living in the jungles of Costa Rica whodoesn't know much about computers and has no money, do this? Good Question. I believed it was a matter of: if it's supposed to happenit will and I'm going to do my best to see that it does. I had finally found a job and was working at the time my idea came. A weeklater I told one of my co-workers, Nicki, who also lived in CR, that Iwanted to make a website & something on FB. She told me she would help mewith whatever she could.So I told her the idea and immediately she understood exactly what I wastalking about. You see Nicki had recently left her job in Costa Ricabecause her boss and talked rampantly about his sexual escapades and hadhookers in the office all day. She started working for someone else whodidn’t pay her last two paychecks. She definitely was in need of somethingamazing. That's how Nicki and I started working together on GET REAL, What twobusiness partners could be any different than Nicki and I? Me- quiet,calm, and conservative; Nicki- loud, energetic, and wild. But we workgreat together and balance each other out. So here we were… two women with no money, not much computer knowledge,living in CR, going to make a website and something on FB?We were a little intimidated to say the least…we both felt a littleinadequate.After all, we weren’t Harvard attending computer engineers like MarkZuckerburg. Heck I hadn't finished college..So we had the drive…but we started researching and realized after ourweeks of research we needed money to pay a developer to develop a websiteand FB application. And it wasn't going to be cheap. But where would themoney come from? We were both pretty broke. Since the beginning thingswere going really fast with GET REAL, and then the money just showed up.The day after I told Nicki, "Well all we need now is an investor", Martincame along. He loved the idea, and committed the money to develop thewebsite, build the FB application, and pay attorney's fees. GET REAL was a go! We hired our developer and started working non-stop, while still workingour jobs. Good thing hubby was a big help, taking care of two toddlers 8hours a day. I told him I had the easier of the two jobs. One thing we realized… that since the beginning things have gone soquickly and perfectly that we feel we are just along for a ride thatsomeone else is taking us on.Strange things have happened along the way, like, my computer was struckby lightning --- blue light came out of my hands and surrounded thecomputer. Killed my computer and I got a headache. Nicki’s hardrivecrashed for apparently no reason… and she needed to replace it. No matterwhat wall we ran into we just kept going. Right before the completion of GET REAL, Nicki sent me a story about ayoung man who had posted his suicide note on FB. He had suffered abuse asa child at the hands of a relative. He had carried this pain through lifewith him, and even had gone on to become a successful software engineer,only to shock his friends and family with his suicide. In his suicideletter that he posted on Facebook, he said he never had anyone he felt hecould share his true thoughts with bc he could never do so without fear ofjudgment. He never got to talk to others that had gone through what hehad. He said how he felt he couldn't tell anyone about how much he wassuffering. But the truth is…there are tons of people going through what hewent through. I thought about how many other people suffer like he did andhurt because they have no one to open up to. And I realized even more thatis what GET REAL is for. So now Nicki and I are putting GET REAL out to the world of Farmville,like buttons, and newsfeeds about what a friend had for dinner last night. Am I the only one whose had difficult times in my life, had a bad day,gotten into a fight with a crazy family member, been depressed, lonely,bored? I didn't think so. So now GET REAL is finally finished and ready to be launched. Where canyou go if you need to vent about that bad day you had, the fight you gotinto with that family member, the dark secret you can't tell anyone, orwhat you really think about...whatever. You can go to GET REAL on FB at http://apps.facebook.com/getrealcommunity or http://www.mygetreal.com

From Angel Atencio and Nicki Foote, co-creators of GET REALThanks Martin we couldn't have done it without you.God, you made it happen.Contact: angel@mygetreal.com