Respectance: Social Networking With A Deadly Twist

This is an interesting concept. It offers a chance for healing among family members and friends how have recently lost loved ones and would like to archive their memories for future generations of their family.

But equally as important, it may offer an opportunity for homicide victims to be recognized by those who are concerned about an unsolved crime falling through the cracks - and may be used to gain grassroots support to get a case to the attention of the media.

Search Engine Web…I never thought of your last point, and I’m not sure they have as well. I’ll forward your comment to the PR rep.

this is a good concept - because it strikes an emotional chord with people. when someone dies close to them, they’ll feel compelled to create a profile to pay respects…and emotional people are quick to open their wallets.

lol, it’ll be funny if this site appears in the deadpool

I think it could also serve as a place to talk about famous people who have died long ago. I’m going to try a Plato and Oscar Wilde page. Wonder if that will work…

Perfect future acquisition for the likes of ancestry.com

Chris @ http://www.frostfirebuzz.com

This has been happening when people on actual social networking sites like orkut.com have passed away.. For example the indian girl who was shot at virginia tech university recently got condolences on her orkut profile.. read more here.. http://www.insideorkut.com/200.....minal.html

What fun review.

Oh jeez. Is nothing sacred in the world of Web 2.0? If this endures, I hope that the “no advertising” policy is kept.

http://obits.eons.com/

Boss you find all type of banana’s as well as Interesting people on Net.

http://www.tekno-world.blogspot.com

deadpool?

I was offered the chance to try this out while in beta format and am well pleased with the result, especially the no-advertising idea, as other sites such as beliefnet.com are now filled with them…..
A very up to date way of paying tribute to those passed over should you wish it, highly recommended.

When you lose someone close, you need to share your grief - and talking to other people who know what you’re going through really does help. For that reason I think the site could help a lot of people.

They should think about what genuine support services they could offer to members suffering a bereavement, probably through links with specialist organisations and charities…

I’m not sure about the celebrity tributes though - seems to trivialize it - but celebrities have families too I guess

Are we going to have as much networking sites as there are websites already?

Uh, this concept has already been done to death (no pun intended). There are already at least 10 companies (and probably many more) already doing this.

Creating online memorials is so nothing new and an already crowded market.

Legacy.com
Ultimatetributes.com
Memory-of.com
MEM
Eons.com
Virtual-memorials.com
remembered-forever.org
virtualmemorialsonline.com

and there are plenty more. And then each country seems to have its own too. And it’s not a very sustainable ongoing service - one time fee and then what.

Still no one is getting this market right. I’m still waiting for the right company to come along & get this all right and put it all together.

Another niche social site that was launched recently - http://www.MyDogSpace.com
It does seems like there are more ‘network sites’ then websites

PS You might also want to pass along to the PR rep that the “social network of death” PR stream was already done (& done quite well in fact) by Eons.

http://mashable.com/2006/08/01.....-over-50s/

Wikipedia is much more honorable place then such sites.

@Mike

I bought deadster.net before realizing there were a ton of services out there and in development. I still think I could do it sleazier than anyone else and make a pile of money, but then my wife wouldn’t speak to me. Why is life full of such hard choices!

@Eric - deadster, that’s a good one. You can could do a cross between Truemors and Napster: Deadster with inappropriate illegally downloaded background music social network Gossip about dead people, I mean what can they do about it, sue you from the great beyond? I kid, I kid…..

Online memorials are about the dead; Respectance is about the living.

Respectance is the first 2.0 approach because it’s both personal and participatory. Think of a special family moment, like the grandparents’ 50th anniversary: lots of people are there and many photos are taken—but you’ll never see most of those pictures. If a Tribute to Grandma is later made, everyone can upload those photos, essentially creating a pool of content richer than any one person’s collection.

People feel better when we remember how our lives were touched by someone we loved. When we come to a Tribute and share these memories with others, we enhance the positive effects for everyone involved. Rather than passive observers, Respectance allows everyone, whatever their age or physical location to participate, interact, and contribute in their own way.

We saw with the Virginia Tech tragedy how Facebook played such an important role for people who wanted to reach out, connect with others and offer their wishes. We see a niche for a dedicated venue that responds to these needs while still offering the social media features that makes the experience an impactful one. That’s why our tagline is “share your memories”, with the emphasis on sharing.

I had this idea. Monitization is easy, peezy.

Do associate programs like “Order his/her favorite book”!

Or work with photo printing sites to make it easy to order the photos that the family has posted. You post the picture in reasonable web resolutions, but have print quality available.

The goal is to help the viewers have one last connection and that is a beautiful thing, even if there is some middle-man money in it.

There are tons of services you could add to this. Have a place where people can pay to put flowers on their actual grave, or virtual flowers like the gifts on facebook. Organize funeral services, coordinating bereavement sessions, etc. etc.

This seems to be the best DeadSpace yet. I can’t wait to die so I can join! =^)

One idea was talked about by is to use AI to let the dead people talk to each other, making it a real social networking site for the dead. That could be interesting. =^)

Here is a blog post where someone discusses this option. http://stanleybing.blogs.fortu.....a-refined/

Respectance is an interesting concept and Todd a cool guy. Best of luck to them!

As I said, this idea has already been done to death, even with social networking elements.

@TIm - those other sites already have all that stuff. I am sorry but this is really nothing new. At all. Sorry Respectance….. all memorial sites are for the living. I don’t want to sound disrepsectful but I don’t think you guys did your homework if you really feel you’re the first 2.0 site that’s cashing in on people’s grief and need to connect, leave tributes, discuss, euglogize etc.

Did you look at memory-of, and some of the tribute sites? you have a nice design but there is honestly nothing new in your site that I see. You’ve run into a big ocean of existing competition. There are even already several pet memorial sites where people can leave tributes, light candles, share memories etc.

Todd, you’re right, those sharing sites should be when the person is living, thus all the social networking sites (MyFamily, Celebration-of, and all their clones, heck even the pure social networkin gsites ) already do all that.

Sorry, my opinion is there is no there there.

In the Philippines, unscrupulous vendors sell what is known as “double-dead” chicken. The chicken dies of some disease, possibly avian flu, but is made to look as if it has been slaughtered, and sold anyway to unsuspecting consumers.

Now we have another prospective definition of “double-dead”, namely when this startup runs out of money and/or momentum, pulls the plug on all the servers, and all the pages disappear from view forever.

@Sputnick - that’s a great point too. I noticed that several of these memorial sites say that they keep the memorials forever, but how? When the owners are long dead and gone, how can they possibly assure that. There is no provision in place to do so. One site says they’ll give you your money back. How nice, but er - I’m dead….. once the hosting fees are no longer paid, all the memorials go into the literal dead pool.

Seems like a pretty solid (though niche) model to me.

In respect to the comments on this service being closed down, I think it should be pretty easy and cheap to leave the websites running perpetually. With a small enough investment, and the ever decreasing costs of hosting, it should be pretty easy to make an investment where the interest pays for the hosting charges. This is basically a perpetuity.

It would be interesting to see if any of the companies are doing this.

Plus there is the issue that if you have so much traffic that it costs a lot of money, then certain advertising models could be pursued to pay for the bandwidth. Of course with this company’s commitment ot never user advertising…

Mike, I respectfully disagree with your conclusions.

While there are other sites doing this concept, are there any clear leaders?

It almost sounds like you think that if there are already competitors, there is no opportunity for success and profit. Don’t forget Google was not close to the first search engine, they were just the first to get it right.

Perhaps you don’t see anything breakthrough in this site, but if they execute correctly it could turn into the market leader and become a very profitable business.

Most likely this funded beta is just the start. Once they grow the concept there are a lot of directions they could go. I see a lot of potential here, for the simple reason that a lot of people have never heard of sites like this. While there may be competitors, the market is far from saturated.

There is plenty of room for a strong new website to promote this concept and make it become a more accepted venue for bereavement.

Tim, sure, you are free to disagree all you want. No clear leaders that I’ve seen, and I’ll bet I know why - has to do with the general behavior of people. Life goes on. Nothing wrong with it, just the human nature.

Sure they can succeed. Maybe they will and best of luck to them. But I still doubt it. Due to the same human nature behavior.

And “in perpetuity” is a long, long time to remain committed from one host (who may or may not stay in business or honor the contract) to host stories forever with a small investment that generates interest without setting up a back-up.

I guess I”m just surprised that people are thinking of this as “new”. Many of these memorial sites tribute places have been around for a bit now.

It´s a good idea, and they make it well to avoid controversy. As for the ads, it´s ok what they have done. The ads will be on other pages of the web, and it´s a way of increasing their users.

I see the next logical extension of this as memorial to those who were killed because they deserved it, rather than dying of disease or natural causes.

Comeuppance.com, anyone?

One problem;

- we thought myspace had bad usage- rates ; After the common dead person has been buried for more than 3 months / most people will never revisit the site.

- Although this is a good idea - for families / …

God!!!!!!!!!! aren’t people tiered of Social Communities??????????????

Beyondwww

i think we already saw this company envisioned at Half-Baked @ E-tech… it was called CorpseTwitter.com.

Memorial sites are considered something of a trend right now, but Memory-Of.com has been around for over three years, providing the community with a way to celebrate life, as well as grieve loss. Our 50,000+ members have been reaching out to each other and forming real friendships since 2004. New members join everyday, and enjoy the free trial memorial pages, and free candles that we offer. The truth is that not all memorial sites are created equal. Memory-Of.com is not about sadness, but celebration and making the good times last forever.

Stephen Forsyth, our Chairman and Founding Trustee, had the death of his brother in mind when he started Memory-Of.com. He realized that there were things he never knew about his brother, that there were things that he was starting to forget, and how valuable a record of his brother’s life would be. So in 2004, at the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum, he launched his company.

We are currently updating our social networking technology, and will have a big re-launch very soon. In the meantime, we continue to offer support and education, by giving access to articles and advice, as well as a network of people to share with. We are a community that’s constantly striving to give comfort to the grieving, and celebrating the lives of those we love.

Respectance has far more to offer than a venue allowing people to create tributes. It is a site to hold memories and tell life stories. Our tag line is “share your memories”, and it is exactly what we hope for. In the social networking context we allow strangers and friends to share visceral emotions whether happy or sad.

It is my hope that as our community grows our members will be able to provide the support for one another that they find difficult to find elsewhere.

Many of the websites listed as competition really aren’t because they are simply online obituaries. We offer the first human face in this niche, and we will work hard to continue that trend.

“Your competition is the one you are yet to know about”

This was told to me only a week ago by a close friend of mine who sold his co. for high eight figures, highly successful individual. In the case of respectance, he is so right.

Cheers

Sahar

Hi yes agree with previous posts - its been done before and a bit better elsewhere I think - although the look and feel is a bit more like linkedin etc than some existing sites - though not sure how appropriate this is anyway. I also think the fact that it is a commercial venture (obviously looking to recoup its money) makes it a lot less appealing than somewhere like http://www.muchloved.com which is a registered not for profit charity who have sponsorship and don’t aim or need to make a profit. Apart from creating much more special & beautiful tributes, they also have their tributes guaranteed by thedatatrust for ten years or in perpetuity which I think is really important for a memorial site - you don’t want your memorial disappearing when a commercial site deosn’t hit its profit margins in the first year! I think this is not the arena for a commercial venture and companies that set out to make money from people’s grief are never going to have an ethos that’s as sympathetic to the needs of the bereaved as a charity.

I’ve spent some time over the last week at Respectance. It’s a great place to collectively share memories rather than reminiscing in solitude. I also think the site gives us an opportunity to transmute our dead from anonymity. This is important to those of us who have loved and lost. We are no longer geographically bound to a physical memorial site to spend time (at a cemetery or mausoleum) in reflection of a loved one. I visited the other sites that people have mentioned in the comments and I think each offers the user a different experience. Some of them feel like a virtual cemetery, funeral home or memorial wall. The attraction to these different sites depends on where you are on you grief journey. Respectance has a light, heavenly atmosphere. I liken my tribute pages to Myspace or Facebook profiles for the dead. Instead of visiting the site to post a comment, you write a memory upon inspiration.

I’ve just been told about the debate going on above and have had a look at the new site Respectance. There is no doubt that memorial sites have massively improved in the last few years. I founded http://www.muchloved.com after my brother died in 95 and I tried to find a memorial site but they were all expensive and awfully styled - think angels at heaven’s gate, flowery fonts and depressing sounding organ music.
For newly bereaved people there are now some really nice choices but I must say that my heart and head told me that this area is one for counselling and support which should be charitable, rather than by making money. Bereaved people are very vulnerable people and this must always be remembered. In teh UK as well as http://www.muchloved.com there is another charity http://www.missyou.org.uk and we are looking to provide the right ethos as well as the right style. Therw will always be room for commercial organisations, but only those that ‘really get it right’ and respectance may or may not have got it. It will no doubbt be an interesting subject to come back to in the future to see developments.

I guess I didnt do wrong when I came up with the idea of creating networks for professionals. I expect to have good user based. Your comments are solicited.