Web site tells you when your mate has died

THE MAN behind monster.com - Jeff Taylor - has started a new web site - Eons.com. It plans to notify users if close friends and associates have just died.

Members of Eons.com can sign up to receive an alert which tells them when someone from a particular area dies. Or it sends an alert in response to pre-defined keywords such as a school or company name.

This is similar to the way that sites like Friends United work. Except the idea is that many over-50s have moved away from their place of birth so they won't necessarily be reading a local paper to look at the traditional death announcements.

There will also be a US database of obituaries dating back to the 1930s to which people can add photos and comments. Eon doesn't say whether people can post their own obituaries - to save others the effort when they finally shuffle off this mortal coil.

The site should become a money-spinner. 44 million of all the 86 million Americans aged over 50 are online, but only a few use so-called 'social networking' sites which are aimed mostly at the young.

Over-50s also happen to control about 67 per cent of the USA's national wealth. µ

L'INQ
Reuters
Eons