it's your legacy... Entrustet HIWI Blog

It’s a sensitive, but important question that you should think about before you pass away.  As Sunday’s front page New York Times article called As Older Users Join Facebook, The Networks Grapples With Death shows, Facebook itself knows about the problem, but has not implemented a full solution to solve it yet.

Some quick stats for you:

Facebook has over 500m users.

Over 375,000 US Facebook users will pass away this year.  For some perspective, that means that more than 1 Facebook users dies every 90 seconds.

About 1.5m Facebook users worldwide will pass away this year, assuming the rest of the world has similar death rates to the United States.  We think this is a fairly good assumption, which means that 3 Facebook users die every minute!

Facebook allows your survivors to memorialize your profile after you pass away, but it doesn’t seem that many people actually go through with memorializing profiles of their friends and family.  Instead, many Facebook profiles turn into “Facebook Ghosts” that continue to haunt their Facebook friends.  We’ve even seen cases where survivors write hurtful messages on the walls of deceased people.  Nobody can go in and clean up these messages, so they are left up for the whole world to see.  That’s why it’s important to make your last wishes known ahead of time using a service like Entrustet.

We haven’t seen much discussion of what people want done with their Facebook profile after they die, so we put it out to Twitter, Facebook and everyone in the Entrustet office.

Question: What do you want to happen to your Facebook profile when you pass away?

There’s four possible answers: Memorialize it, Transfer to a Friend, Permanently Delete or I don’t care, I’m dead.  Here’s what they had to say:

Nathan Lustig, Cofounder – I want my Facebook deleted after I die.  I know that some people might be comforted by my memorialized profile, but I don’t want anyone to ever have access to my account and I’m confident that there will be other websites out there where people can come together to remember me.  I’d much rather have people remember me by my blog.

Jesse Davis, Cofounder – I want my Facebook account deleted. I don’t particularly want my family and friends to remember me by my facebook profile. I’d prefer they remember me primarily via their memories.

Kathleen Selden, Lawyer Sales – I think I would like my Facebook to be memorialized in the case of my death. I know that if one of my friends passed away, I would love to still have the option of looking back on our time together and remembering them through our photos and conversations on Facebook, and I would like my friends to be able to utilize this option as well if they want to. This is especially true now that I am about to graduate and it is likely that my friends and I will be scattered across the country and will not necessarily be able to make it to a formal memorial service. It would be nice to have another outlet to share memories and remember people by.

Christine Ebinger, Lawyer Sales – I would like to have my Facebook account deleted when I die.  I think there are better ways to be remembered than by my Facebook wall, such as a memorial service, etc.  I think it would be a little weird if I still had an active account if I weren’t around to add to it.

Rob Howard, Social Media/Business Development – I think I want my Facebook memorialized after I die, at least at this point in my life. I don’t have any significant blogs or other social media accounts, and it seems like a cool way for friends and family to come together to reminisce and share posts.

Liz Prinz, Social Media – Facebook is the digital asset I use most often.  If I pass away, I would like to have it memorialized for a limited amount of time, maybe two weeks, and then have it deleted. I always thought it was kind of nice when people were able to post on a deceased person’s wall some closing remarks. People can also have a little bit of time to look at photos of the deceased, which might be good closure as well. But in the end I would definitely want it deleted, there’s no point in keeping it up forever.

Nora Liu, Business Development – I want my Xiaonei account (Chinese Facebook) to transfer to my children when I pass away. No one else can have access to the account when he or she is alive, so I want my children to share what I have after I pass away.  Since facebook is another version of Xiaonei, I also want it to transfer to my children for the same reasons.

Joseph Brennan, Finance – I think I want my facebook memorialized after I die, at least at this point in my life. I don’t have any significant blogs or other social media accounts, and it seems like a cool way for friends and family to come together to reminisce and share posts.

Danya Mi, Business Development – I don’t care about what will happen to my Facebook after I die. I think memorialized profile would be sweet but I won’t be able to see it anyway since I’m dead…If anyone of my family wants to access to my account, I am totally fine. I am also thinking that it can be great if someone can help me post maybe some secret notes I wrote before I die. The notes can tell all my friends the secrets I want to let people know about only after I die. Maybe I will write a note to list the names of people I like/dislike in my life.

Corey Capasso, Founder Add the Flavor – I want my Facebook profile to turn into a virtual tombstone so that people can comment on my wall and have something to remember me by.

Bryan Camp – Psychology Grad Student, Arizona State University – I would like the option to be given to my wife and family to either delete it or a memorial type page up for a few years.

Forrest Woolworth – PerBlue – I want my facebook profile memorialized in some sort of way, but I want my wife to be able to moderate the profile for me.

Tags:

delete facebook profile · facebook death · facebook death policy · memorialize facebook profile