Ghost Profiles: 375,000 American Facebook Users Will Pass Away This Year
By Nathan Lustig on Jul 19 th, with 2 COMMENTS
Over 375,000 US Facebook users will pass away this year and over 1.5m will pass away worldwide, a number that’s risen by almost 100k since March when we calculated our first estimate at South By Southwest. It’s a huge problem for Facebook and for the friends and relatives of people who pass away.
The rest of the world is starting to take notice. Yesterday, the New York Times ran an article on the front page titled As Older Users Die, Facebook Ghosts Reach Out, which has received over 140 comments in the last 24 hours. For the first time, Facebook acknowledged that it has a problem with “ghost profiles” and is trying to find a solution that balances the need to respect users wishes with the scalability necessary to service Facebook’s 500m and growing user base.
If you don’t want your profile to turn into a ghost that “will haunt your friends and family”, make sure you’ve set up an Entrustet account with your last wishes so that your family will know what to do. It’s free, so sign up today!
July 20, 2010 at 5:02 pm, PW said:
RT @Entrustet: Ghost Profiles: 375,000 American Facebook Users Will Pass Away This Year: http://ow.ly/2e15A #digitaldeath
November 23, 2010 at 5:03 pm, 247,000 Bloggers Will Die This Year in the United States said:
[...] at South By Southwest 2010. After Facebook hit 500m users, we updated our calculations to show that 375,000 US Facebook users and 1.5m world wide would die this year. That’s a staggering 3 every single minute that Facebook has no idea about. Our stat has [...]