More and more, people are realizing that New Media is getting older. Thousands of people a year are already passing on, leaving amongst other things, their online profiles.
Handling a dead loved one’s online profile seems superfluous until FaceBook suggests that you friend someone who’s dead. Hopefully you won’t have to deal with this issue for a long, long time. In the end, how to handle a passed loved one’s legacy is a sensitive topic that needs a solidified, documented process that not only makes it easier for surviving member to handle their loved ones online legacy, but is also fraud-proof.
It’s already too easy to make the masses believe that Subway’s Jared is dead.
Time.com took a stab at handling the topic and approached it with the grace and respect of a drunk bull in a china shop during a weekend sale.
Take a look at the above image. Click on the article. Sh*t.
In their first paragraph Time.com spelled out the FaceBook feature allowing surviving members to turn pages of those who’ve passed into memorials. Then in between that paragraph and the proceeding paragraph which spells out the policy in greater detail, Time.com slinked in a link to their FaceBook fan page.
C-Ho Mesothelioma Rating: 2 out of 10.
Dipsh*ts.
There are times to self-promote. Speaking of how to treat the memory of the dead is not one of those times. It’s like the cemetery plot salesmen who tied to upsell my grandmother’s tombstone. He wasn’t playing on my grandfather’s sense of guilt. He was hoping my grandfather wasn’t paying attention. I think he even tried to sell my grandfather a reinforced coffin that could withstand a class 3 hurricane – an essential asset to any coffin buried in the Chicago area.
Then there was the time where the mortuary tried to sell me on a cruise so I could spread my hillbilly father’s ashes in the Caribbean…
Apparently everyone needs to go to the Island eventually.
How Time.com could handle this Better
1) Put a link to your fanpage on the side columns. FaceBook makes widgets for this sh*t. Here, Time.com. Check out this link to the how to add a Face Book Fan Page widget on your website.
2) Add links to pages family members can go to so they can sign up and have their loved ones profiles taken care of.
3) Don’t sell me a cemetery plot.
