By Erich Vieth on October 27th, 2009
What to do about your dead Facebook friends
What can be done about your Facebook friends who die? According to an article by Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon.com, Facebook is coming up with some solutions centered on “memorial pages.” Williams also gives this advice:
Be careful what profile pic you post or what your friends write on your wall — it might be your last enduring image.
This reminds me of the niche Myspace site, Mydeathspace.com. Myspace is essentially obsolete at this point, of course, and Facebook has not adopted a very solid or respectable solution for its dead user pages. Earlier this year, The Consumerist noted that Facebook was refusing to delete the pages of the dead. Dead user’s pages have been a problem for both family and Facebook for some time, then. I personally find the idea of a “memorial page” a little crass, but preferable to Facebook’s current do-nothing policy.
Maybe there’s nothing strange or wrong with incorporating dead-centered memorial pages into Facebook, though my initial reaction to the idea is discomfort. Since its inception, Facebook has slowly expanded its breadth from college students, to alumni, to younger kids, to everyone- including original users’ parents and grandparents. Why not expand the barrier even wider, allowing even involuntary Facebook membership from beyond-the-grave? It seems a little perverse, but maybe inevitable.