What happens to one’s social media accounts after death? MyWebWill, a start-up company in Sweden, is trying to address the problem of handling the online lives of people after they die . VentureBeat‘s Kim-Mai Cutler sat down with founders Lisa Granberg and Elin Tybring to get an explanation of the service.
Ms. Cutler writes:
MyWebWill will work on a “freemium” model. The free version will simply deactivate all your accounts and then the paid version can add more customization. The user can decide if they want to clear their Facebook wall or if they want a specific final Facebook profile photo, for example.
Afterlife online management is a growing business. One site, The Digital Beyond, keeps a list of companies, such as AssetLock, Death Switch and GreatGoodbye.com, that help people plan for their death or memorialize a loved one.
In the past, planning for one’s own death included a will with instructions for taking care of the physical remains of an active life such as bank accounts, letters, photos and possessions. One meeting with an attorney and it was planned. Everything, for the most part, was located either at home or at the office.
Today, digital assets have replaced the physical ones. The Digital Beyond urges people to consider family photographs:
These days they are more likely to be digital from the time they’re taken. Archivists refer to this as a “born-digital” asset. These born-digital assets, in this case digital photographs, are family heirlooms, a vital part of your identity. Passing these heirlooms to the next generation is not just a luxury, it’s an integral part of identity preservation. We’ve been doing this for ages. By passing an object of our identity along, we can leave a story or memory behind. It’s important to know how your survivors will obtain your born-digital assets, because they won’t find a drawer of printed photos in your residence, they’ll have to go looking on your computer or in the cloud.
In addition to family heirlooms like digital photos, one has to also consider what will happen to emails or important documents stored online.
The more our digital lives grow, the more important it will become for us to make those arrangements for those we leave behind.
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