Social networking meets obituary column

BRINGING SOCIAL-NOTWORKING to the dearly departed, a web site called tributes.com will officially go ‘live’ next week.

The site will let people write 300 word obituaries for free, or pay between $80 to $300 for fancy multimedia entries. Families, friends and nosey parkers are all invited to browse on by and pay their final virtual respects, read memorials, post comments and more.

Officially opening to the public on Sept. 23, the site, founded by Jeff Taylor creator of job site Monster.com, has already managed to dig up four million dollars in equity financing. Amongst investors are a unit of Murdoch’s News Corporation, Dow Jones and some outfit called eons.com.

Taylor obviously reckons it’s about time a sort of ‘deadbook’ or ‘gravespace’ came to the Interwibble, noting, “obituaries are the last section of the newspaper to migrate to the web.”

The site will also lay to rest queries about whether or not that old acquaintance from way back when is finally dead or not. With dates of death for 84 million Americans going as far back as the 1890s, and using the Social Security Administration’s Death Index database, users can even sign up for email alerts when a person has died based on last name, school, military unit or ZIP code. [Eh? Aren't we a British site? Ed.]

Tributes apparently also has plans to let users download their contact lists to the site for an ongoing vigil to see if any of them kick the bucket.

Some may wonder how the site plans on making money apart from charging user fees for posts and comments, posting online ads and selling ‘dead loved one memorabilia’ including CDs, videos and books. Well, where there’s a will there’s a way and the site is apparently also looking into revenue sharing deals with funeral parlors to ensure they don’t run out of money and go six feet under wi thin months. µ