Life After Death on Facebook

Thankfully, I hadn't considered it yet: what would happen to my, or a friend's, Facebook page if they passed on? Of course, I know it's probably not at the top of grieving family members' lists to make sure they also have a final resting place for a Facebook page. But say you want to remember that person, is there a way to do it? Facebook announced this week a touching way for you to do so.

Remembering the loss of a friend and co-worker, Max Kelly of Facebook blogged about the new feature which allows users to set up a condolences page for the recently departed.

In order to "memorialize" a profile, a user must prove that he or she had a relationship with the departed person, which can be done by providing the person's email address or date of birth. Thereafter, you have to confirm the death with Facebook via a news article or obituary. Obviously, that's being done to ensure no one abuses the otherwise heartfelt gesture.

When a profile has been memorialized, "sensitive" information, like phone numbers, is removed, and the profile is locked up to anyone who was not already a confirmed friend. If you are a non-friend, you'll have to request to be added by the page admin, as the page won't come up in search queries. Once confirmed, friends of the deceased can leave wall posts in remembrance.

Kelly says the idea was something Facebook had to figure out how best to approach, but it looks like the results are positive: "As time passes, the sting of losing someone you care about also fades but it never goes away," he said in his post. "I still visit my friend's memorialized profile to remember the good times we had and share them with our mutual friends."

Photo by benstein via Flickr.