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Web Nuggets: Monster.com Founder Starts Social Networking Site for the Dead

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    Monster.com founder Jeff Taylor helped you find a job, and helped ease you into middle age. Now he wants to help you build the last web page you'll ever need.

    Tributes.com is scheduled for a soft launch in June. It aims to provide a central location to house online memorials for those who have passed on. It's starting with $4.3 million in funding, with The Wall Street Journal as a lead investor.

    Taylor, who retired from Monster.com in 2005, says Monster was intended to take the jobs section of newspaper's classified ads online. So online obituaries seemed like an inevitable next step.

    "I'm extremely bullish about this business -- it's not a question of if it will explode, but when," says Taylor, who spun the business off his baby boomer social networking site Eons.com. "I've watched and built a career on migrating the whole newspaper to the web, and the obituary section is the laggard category."

    The site comes as the funeral industry is learning to target the public's desire to grieve online for the dearly departed. On social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, online memorials are springing up organically to give friends, family members and strangers a place to mourn, and even small, family-owned funeral homes have begin offering web-based memorials for their customers.

    "Until Tributes, people had to have very specific information -- where their friends died and what funeral home handled the services -- to find out what happened and leave memorials," said John Heald, a funeral director who is working with Tributes.com. "We are building a channel to the funeral industry to build our site with them, so we can be an aggregator for all the obituaries."

    Tributes plans to sell its service to funeral homes that will then package an online tribute with the other services offered to the bereaved. Obits will stay up indefinitely, while condolences may come down after five to 10 years.

    "We need to learn from MySpace. For example, when a teenager dies there are thousands of condolences," Heald says. "It's a new, important, effective way of grieving."


    Link.
  2.  (2104.2)
    "We need to learn from MySpace. For example, when a teenager dies there are thousands of condolences,"
    And there's also several thousand flavors of snark that will occur if, say, the individual was gay, or a suicide, or such. This kinda feels alot of Not Right....

    Also, if this is anything like Monster.com, it'll be populated primarily by third-party funerary agents trolling for their next commission check....
  3.  (2104.3)
    At least we won't have to deal with corpses saying "THaks Fer Teh ADD!"

    Seriously, are we really this egotistical? You're dead, get over yourself.



    (Mind you I have been squirreling away since my teen years for a ziggurat made of finest obsidian to mark my transcendence, nay, apotheosis unto the godhead.)
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      CommentAuthorEgon
    • CommentTimeMay 5th 2008
     (2104.4)
    YOU CAN NEVAR ESCAPE WEB 2.0!
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      CommentAuthortedcroland
    • CommentTimeMay 5th 2008
     (2104.5)
    I'mana be shot out of a cannon when I die!

    Seriously, though...why? Who is it really helping by having a never ending testament to yourself on the interwub? When I die, I hope I'm remembered, but by those who knew me in life. Having a block of stone or some animated .gifs isn't going to help that, really.

    Though I'm sure I'll be remembered by the families of those I take with me.
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      CommentAuthorAlan Tyson
    • CommentTimeMay 5th 2008
     (2104.6)
    Question: When this site flops, will it host its own memorial service?
  7.  (2104.7)
    I assume the first page will be dedicated to common sense.
  8.  (2104.8)
    I don't think it will flop.

    How many people read the newspaper, versus reading it on the internet? Our information delivery system is changing, so why not this? The dead are a touchy subject for some, but not for others. People will embrace it, some people will shun it. Others will fall in the middle.

    I can see an alert feature being added in, for friends or family. The site notifies you when someone on your list appears in the obituraries - sounds morbid, I know, but it's convenient for some people. You can lose track of friends, be estranged from family - so how do you find out when they die? With the sheer amount of baby boomers the US has, the site makes a lot of sense.
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      CommentAuthortedcroland
    • CommentTimeMay 5th 2008
     (2104.9)
    The whole thing reminds me of:

  10.  (2104.10)
    Ha!
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      CommentAuthorCamyLuna
    • CommentTimeMay 5th 2008
     (2104.11)
    @tedcroland
    I'mana be shot out of a cannon when I die!
    One of my mom's friends did that. His ashes were shot out of a party cannon at a gay disco in New Orleans.

    But back on topic.

    I think that it could be a good thing. Both of my parents are gone, and at their funerals many people told me that they'd mail copies of photos that they had. Some people did, some didn't. But maybe having a page where people could post them would have been easier.
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      CommentAuthorFauxhammer
    • CommentTimeMay 5th 2008
     (2104.12)
    I'm going to have to go register irishfunnies.com.
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      CommentAuthorkaolin
    • CommentTimeMay 5th 2008
     (2104.13)
    I can see an alert feature being added in, for friends or family. The site notifies you when someone on your list appears in the obituraries - sounds morbid, I know, but it's convenient for some people. You can lose track of friends, be estranged from family - so how do you find out when they die? With the sheer amount of baby boomers the US has, the site makes a lot of sense.


    This makes a couple disturbing sorts of awesome :)
  14.  (2104.14)
    How many people read the newspaper, versus reading it on the internet? Our information delivery system is changing, so why not this?

    And not to sound completely crass, but have you ever had the pleasure of trying to get an obit printed in the newspaper? The cost is outrageous. Usually like one month's rent worth of outrageous. That's a terrible thing to have to think about when a loved one kicks the can, which is why funeral homes usually handle it, only to double the cost and pass it on tho the customer. At least this way it'd be free, or more reasonably priced.

    No denying it's weird, though.
  15.  (2104.15)
    And not to sound completely crass, but have you ever had the pleasure of trying to get an obit printed in the newspaper?
    No, not yet anyway.

    No denying it's weird, though.
    Lots of future stuff starts out that way, until it's just the norm.
  16.  (2104.16)
    Isn't there something like this already? I remember Mr Ellis linking to it once, something like mydeadspace. I remember the comment being something about if you look on there and remember its the 21st century, we haven't even learnt how to control our cars.
  17.  (2104.17)
    @Pete Martin

    orwellseyes mentioned mydeathspace a few weeks back. Warren talked about it on his LJ in 2007.

    The main difference between mydeathspace and this one, is this one can be tied to a funeral package. I hate to use the words, one stop shopping, but they apply. More of an entirely commercial application.
  18.  (2104.18)
    I want to be remembered online by a million dancing LOLbees that buzz the Internationale while performing aerodynamically impossible manouvers.

    I will also put something in my will that instructs that in no way shape or form is Rupert Murdoch, or any of his fell brood to make money from my demise.

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