Facebook Memorializes Dead With New Reconnect Feature
Facebook is giving users a way to stay in touch with the dearly departed with its Facebook Reconnect service, which is now touted as a way to memorialize the deceased.In addition to its recently implemented News Feed and Live Feed formats on its homepage, the social networking giant released a Reconnect tool, which offers a service designed to “reconnect” members with old friends and contacts if they haven’t communicated in a while.
The Reconnect feature is an extension of the site’s Suggestion service, which appears on the right hand side of the page, reminding users to get in touch with contacts possibly needing help on Facebook.
However, there still might be some bugs that have to be ironed out in Facebook’s “Reconnect.” The new tool took reconnecting to a whole new level when it offered users a way to stay in touch with exes, current spouses and deceased Facebook contacts with existing profile pages.
Meanwhile, Facebook maintains that the option to use Reconnect to stay in touch with dead people was deliberate. The social networking giant maintained in a company blog post that members could use the Reconnect feature to memorialize loved ones whose profiles remained intact by posting remembrances on their Wall.
“We understand how difficult it can be for people to be reminded of those who are no longer with them, which is why it’s important when someone passes away that their friends or family contact Facebook to request that a profile be memorialized,” said Max Kelly, Facebook chief security officer.
Kelly used a personal example of a good friend who was killed in a bicycle accident to illustrate the necessity for memorializing user’s profiles on Facebook.
“As time passes, the sting of losing someone you care about also fades but it never goes away. I still visit my friend’s memorialized profile to remember the good times we had and share them with our mutual friends,” he said.
Kelly said that the profiles of the deceased no longer appear in the Suggestions box once family members decide to memorialize their profile, and also mentioned that the site would remove sensitive information, and prevents users from logging into it in the future, while enabling family and friends to post on the user’s Wall in remembrance.
The blog post elicited numerous comments, some critical, others in praise, of Facebook’s effort to reconnect family and friends with their deceased loved ones.
However, one Facebook user asked an obvious question. “There are 540 comments so far—I’ve not read all of them to see if it has been asked yet, but I don’t understand why everyone isn’t asking this,” said Don Orkoskey. “What if the person isn’t really dead? What if a friend (or non-friend) is playing a sick joke?”
Facebook ‘memorialises’ profiles
Facebook has announced that it will be giving friends and family the option to “memorialise” the profiles of members who have died.
It follows some cases of members receiving updates about dead friends.
If a user is reported as deceased, Facebook will remove sensitive information such as status updates and contacts.
When reporting a death, users must offer “proof” by submitting either an obituary or news article.
“When someone leaves us, they don’t leave our memories or our social network,” Max Kelly, head of security at the firm, wrote in the official Facebook blog.
“To reflect that reality, we created the idea of “memorialised” profiles as a place where people can save and share their memories of those who’ve passed.”
Memorialised accounts will have new privacy settings so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in search.
Contact information and status updates will be removed and the person will no longer appear in the newly-introduced Suggestions panel which, according to its blog it is designed “to remind people to take actions with friends who need help on Facebook”.
But there have been some some cases where people were ‘reminded’ about dead friends or relatives.
“We understand how difficult it can be for people to be reminded of those who are no longer with them, which is why it’s important when someone passes away that their friends or family contact Facebook to request that a profile be memorialised,” Mr Kelly wrote in his blog.
In separate news, Facebook has once again been targeted by cybercriminals.
Security firm Websense has reported thousands of fake messages, purporting to come from Facebook Support, with a malicious payload.
The fake message invites users to download a new password as part of ongoing security messages.
If users click on it it will download a piece of software which could allow their machine to be taken over by malicious hackers.
In one day, Websense has seen 90,000 such messages.
Facebook: Track your share count & Memorialize dead once
You might not be very accustomed to Facebook’s News and Live feeds until now and just following few days lining with the recent released features Facebook brings in light deceased FB users through its new ‘memorialize’ functionality and another facility to view ‘sharing count’.
Sharing his experience on Facebook blog Max Kelly describes his personal example of departing with his friend as the incidence that cropped the idea to memorialize the profiles of deceased users.
Friends and family can memorialize the members by submitting a proof of the death in form of an obituary or news article and Facebook will remove sensitive information as status updates and contacts those reported memorialized. Their profile remains intact and loved once can keep posting remembrance on their walls.
Kelly reflects back to the time spend with his friend and said “We understand how difficult it can be for people to be reminded of those who are no longer with them, which is why it’s important when someone passes away that their friends or family contact Facebook to request that a profile be memorialized,”
People may pass but memories always stays with us, visiting a memorialized profiles brings back those good times spend with the person so every time you visit the profile and can save and share those golden memories of yours.
Memorialized accounts will have new privacy settings so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in search and profiles of the deceased will no longer appear in the Suggestions box once family members decide to memorialize their profile.
Next new change is delivered to Facebook ‘Share’ button. It includes a live counter, which shows the number of times that a particular article, video, or piece of content has been shared. So the counts tell you how much popular is that particular content is among the other Facebook members.
Launched three years back the Share button enables users to take content from across the Web and share it with friends on Facebook, where it can be re-shared boundlessly with the new functionality users can not only share instantly with but now they can even track the popularity of the video/ article.etc.
Facebook blog reads “This makes it easy to see what is being shared the most” and “Any website can add the new Facebook Share button. Our launch partners don’t cover all the sites you use on a daily basis, so if you want to see this list grow then get in touch with your favorite websites, developers, and services, and tell them that you want to see the new Facebook Share button. Developer can learn more about how to add the new version of Share to your website on our developer blog. With your help, we can all share more information across the web.”
Facebook hasn’t addressed dead users issue
TORONTO
— The office of Canada’s privacy commissioner says Facebook has yet to address some of her concerns about what happens to profiles of users who die.
This week, the social networking site has been reminding members about a service that “memorializes” profiles of deceased users at the request of friends and family members.
Various online reports suggested Facebook was changing how it dealt with the accounts of deceased users, but a spokeswoman for privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart says the site isn’t really doing anything new.
In August, Stoddart’s office released a report expressing concerns about how the social networking site deals with the personal information of users, including those who die.
Stoddart wants to ensure that users realize that their personal information could remain online, even after death.
Facebook will take down an account if requested by a deceased user’s family or friends.
Facebook has indicated it intends to update its privacy policy and will disclose what happens to a user’s information after they die, but has yet to do so.
Memorializing a profile changes privacy settings so no further status updates can be made, contact information is hidden, and only confirmed friends can access the profile.
Facebook has more than 300 million active users worldwide, including about 12 million in Canada.
Continuing to live on Facebook after you die
Zack Teibloom
What happens to your Facebook account after you die? It’s not like you write in your will who takes over your Facebook account if you die. How many Facebook users have a will at all?
In the past week, Facebook security has published exactly what happens to the deceased person’s profile, so they are protected and the family has final say on what happens to their online identity.
If someone passes away, family or friends have to fill out this form, proving that you’ve indeed passed away.
According to Facebook, four things happen to your Facebook profile when you die:
1. Your account is sealed from any future log-in attempts.
2. You are taken off public search results.
3. Your wall is left open for friends and family to post on.
4. Status updates won’t show up in news feed
When Facebook launched a recent update, users were upset that they had friends who were deceased suggested for them to reconnect with.
“We understand how difficult it can be for people to be reminded of those who are no longer with them, which is why it’s important when someone passes away that their friends or family contact Facebook to request that a profile be memorialized,” Max Kelly, Facebook’s head of security said in an October 26th blog post.
The official word on what happens to a memorialized account:
“When an account is memorialized, we also set privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in search. We try to protect the deceased’s privacy by removing sensitive information such as contact information and status updates. Memorializing an account also prevents anyone from logging into it in the future, while still enabling friends and family to leave posts on the profile Wall in remembrance.”
Families do have the right to have the account removed. According to Time, “If relatives prefer not to have the profile stand as an online memorial, Facebook says it will remove the account altogether.”
According to Time, a privacy commissioner was “quite pleased” with Facebook’s response to the office’s concerns about what happens after someone passes away and in the article they mention how Facebook has a better, more thorough policy than MySpace.
What Happens to Your Facebook After You Die?
In an Oct. 26 blog post, Max Kelly, Facebook’s head of security, announced the company’s policy of “memorializing” profiles of users who have died, taking them out of the public search results, sealing them from any future log-in attempts and leaving the wall open for family and friends to pay their respects. Though most media reports claimed this was a new Facebook feature, a spokeswoman for the company told TIME that it’s an option the site has had since its early days.
The company decided to publicize the policy because of a backlash caused by a new version of the site’s homepage that was rolled out on Oct. 23, which includes automatically generated “suggestions” of people to “reconnect” with. Within days of the launch, Twitter users and bloggers from across the Web complained that some of these suggestions were for friends who had died. “Would that I could,” complained a user on Twitter before ending her tweet with the hash tag #MassiveFacebookFail.
“We understand how difficult it can be for people to be reminded of those who are no longer with them, which is why it’s important when someone passes away that their friends or family contact Facebook to request that a profile be memorialized,” Kelly said in the post. To discourage pranksters, Facebook does require proof before sending a profile down the digital river Styx. Family or friends must fill out a form, providing a link to an obituary or other information confirming a user’s death, before the profile is officially memorialized. Once that is completed, the user will cease showing up in Facebook’s suggestions, and information like status updates won’t show up in Facebook’s news feed, the stream of real-time user updates that is the site’s centerpiece. If relatives prefer not to have the profile stand as an online memorial, Facebook says it will remove the account altogether. (Read: “How to Manage Your Online Life When You’re Dead.”)
Better publicizing memorialized profiles is an attempt by Facebook to answer lingering privacy concerns. Canadian privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart investigated the company in July and issued a report that asked Facebook to explain certain areas of its privacy policy, including policies regarding the profiles of deceased users. In response, the company promised to issue a new privacy policy that better articulates how user information is treated postmortem and offered the commissioner an outline of its memorializing policy, nearly three months before the blog post explained it to users. Spokeswoman Anne-Marie Hayden says the privacy commissioner was “quite pleased” with Facebook’s response to the office’s concerns and says the commissioner will review the detailed version of the site’s new policy, expected in late October. (See what happens when parents join Facebook.)
Facebook’s attempt to clearly state its policy is prudent, as other social-networking sites have struggled with the question of users’ deaths. MySpace in particular has had a difficult time with digital rubbernecking — during the site’s heyday, a handful of well-trafficked blogs specialized in matching MySpace profiles directly to obituaries and posting the pairings online for all to see. By sealing profiles to family and friends and removing profiles from search results, Facebook assuages users’ fears that they’ll be fodder for online voyeurs in the event of their untimely demise — hopefully putting the issue to rest.
Facebook’s ‘Reconnect’ Strategy Is Brilliant
Recently, in addition to giving you suggestions to which friends you might add to your profile, Facebook also started enticing users to reconnect and engage less active users. The campaign has partly backfired, as some of the recommendations were dead people and ex-lovers, but I still think it’s brilliant, and a good sign that Facebook has a clear strategy laid out for the future.
Facebook (
) currently has a problem that plagues only the biggest online services out there, but a serious one nevertheless: it’s getting too big. Its growth hasn’t been spectacular in the last couple of months like it once was, but one has to wonder if it’s simply nearing the natural limit for that type of service. Once you’ve conquered a huge portion of domestic (US) users, and international users, where do you turn to?
Existing users. Facebook’s algorithms, while still not perfectly tuned, recognize that some users aren’t using Facebook regularly, and entice their friends to reconnect with them; write on their wall, send them photos, and the like. It’s the perfect campaign. If a company sends you an email that says “hey, you’ve been inactive, but why not give our service another go,” you’ll probably disregard it. But if a friend posts a photo of you or some of your friends, and the only place you can get it is Facebook, you’re far more likely to log in – and get hooked – once again.
I’m an active Facebook user, and this latest strategy is also working well on my end. I see suggestions for friends I already have; I’m interested in why Facebook’s suggesting them; I go check out why they haven’t been active; in the end, I really did reconnect with some of them.
So, instead of simply waiting for someone to utter that dreadful sentence: “Facebook has a lot of users, but how many are active?,” Facebook is working on reengaging their inactive users, recognizing that they’re just as valuable as new users. Smart thinking. If they manage to tweak their algorithms and stop gross errors from happening, that is.
On Facebook, Reconnecting with the Dead
When Facebook rolled out its new Reconnect tool over the weekend, few could have predicted it would lead to a dust-up about how the site deals with the profiles of deceased users.
Along with last Friday’s upgrades to its News Feed and Live Feed features, Facebook also added a Reconnect tool, which takes the current Suggestions feature one step further and recommends friends a user should contact if they haven’t been in touch for a while.
Which is when the blogosphere went haywire. Apparently, the Reconnect tool got a little cheeky and started suggesting reconnections with users’ exes, current spouses (”Um, wasn’t that what the weekend was for?” wrote Twitter user Davidwinfrey), as well as users’ deceased friends whose profiles remained intact.
On Twitter, a storm of complaints and jokes popped up about the Reconnect feature, such as user jessefarmer, who wrote, “‘Facebook’s “reconnect with him’ feature just recommended I write on a dead friend’s wall.” User KenHuffman tweeted, “Facebook is suggesting that I reconnect with my wife by writing on her wall. I’m thinking coming home every night is a tad more effective,” while Jweiler wrote, “OH: The new “reconnect” feature on Facebook could be renamed “Unfriend Suggestion.”
Facebook chief security officer Max Kelly took to the company’s blog to address what to do in the unfortunate case that a friend dies and his or her profile lives on, sharing a personal anecdote about how the accidental death of his own friend inspired the creation of a “memorialized” profile where friends can share memories about the deceased, but only confirmed friends can see it.
“We understand how difficult it can be for people to be reminded of those who are no longer with them, which is why it’s important when someone passes away that their friends or family contact Facebook to request that a profile be memorialized,” Mr. Kelly wrote. “For instance, just last week, we introduced new types of Suggestions that appear on the right-hand side of the home page and remind people to take actions with friends who need help on Facebook. By memorializing the account of someone who has passed away, people will no longer see that person appear in their Suggestions.”
Facebook previously addressed the question of what should be done with the profiles of the deceased after the Canadian government asked the site clarify that it was memorializing profiles of the deceased.
Brandee Barker, Facebook’s director of communications, wrote in an email message that the Suggestions feature generates all of a users’ friends who have just joined Facebook and might need help in adding new friends. However, “the technology is not able to detect the human nature of those relationships,” she wrote. “For example, a suggestion may arise if a user has left her job and her former boss remains a friend whose profile she has not visited in a few months, or two people stay connected on the site after a divorce or break-up.”
Not all of the Twitter buzz about Reconnect was negative or snarky–user ResinBarbarian wrote, “To be honest, I often question the value of Facebook. However, when I reconnect with a dear old friend, as I did today, I’m grateful.”
Facebook also on Monday announced the addition of a “live counter” to its Share feature, in which the number of times that a user shares a particular article or video is counted, not unlike the social sharing site Digg. “The next time you’re watching a video of Filippo Inzaghi trying to score on Raul Gonzalez’s turf on Real Madrid, you not only can share it instantly with your friends through the Facebook Share button, you also can track the popularity of the video,” wrote Facebook product manager Mark Kinsey.
