Monday, June 20, 2011

What happens to Social Media sites when you're no longer around

A friend of mine recently died after a long, close to three year struggle with Ewing's Sarcoma. She was a very brave and inspirational woman and will be missed by many close friends and family.

In addition to knowing her personally, I was friends with her on FaceBook. Which brings me to the title of this post. We continue to be "friends" on FaceBook even though she is no longer here. People continue to post remembrance's on her passing and tag her in pictures. In other instances, I've heard about people who go back to their friends page on the anniversary of their passing. It's a very interesting phenomena. It's almost a living memorial.

Suppose, however, you didn't want to live on forever on FaceBook or LinkedIn. As I think about this, I'm not sure I know what I'd want to do when I'm gone. Is it better, for those around you, to have a place that keeps your memory alive for them? Would you prefer to have it all wiped clean and let the memories fade away? Just another unintended consequence of this thing we call Social Media. Frankly, it makes my head hurt thinking about it.

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