Chicago (IL) - Tributes.com, a new social networking website founded by Jeff Taylor, who created Monster.com and Eons. com,  has plans to serve as a means for individuals who want to create a virtual memorial for friends, family, and the famous that have passed on. The site is set to go live on September 23, 2008 and will deliver features similar to classmates.com to the deceased.

The site was founded on the premise that the obituaries are typically the last information to wind up online.  Taylor plans to point to all of the deficiencies of obituaries run in newspapers and believes that individuals need to be memorialized and families may appreciate the option of keeping the memory alive and online for periods of time following death.

Tributes.com will be competing with Legacy.com, a ten year old website that is owned by the Tribune Company. Tributes.com utilizes information from the Social Security Administration’s Death Index database, and information supplied by funeral homes to keep up with the dates of death for over 84 million Americans since the 1890’s.
 
The site will allow obituaries of up to three hundred words to be posted free of charge. People can also choose to post entries containing greater detail and even multimedia costing about $80 annually. Or they might choose to purchase an unlimited placement of their obituary for $300. The website allows individuals to add comments and multimedia for a fee as well.

Site members are alerted via e-mail if a person has died based on their last name, military unit, school, or even zip code. Eventually the site plans to add a feature that allows users to upload their address book to the site in effort to keep up with the deaths of their friends and relatives.

Tributes.com intends to make their profit from user fees, online advertising, sharing revenue with funeral homes, and selling flowers and books and videos about grief and death. The company is is financed by Eons.com, Dow Jones and News Corp.

Bad Idea...

Sep 15, 2008 16:31     

Somehow, I don't see this website taking off. Why should we live in the past... Let them go people!
JackCrackerMan report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

Books about death??

Sep 16, 2008 01:50     

Why not books about life?
Virtualban report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

this has been done before

Sep 16, 2008 07:04     

I think it was called my death space the whole website will turn into one huge troll and the profiles will be defaced
lolz report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Re: this has been done before

Sep 16, 2008 08:51     

"the whole website will turn into one huge troll and the profiles will be defaced" Isn't that true of any site that lets people post comments? :D
[TR] report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

I thought legacy.com was trying to do this

Sep 16, 2008 09:04     

apparently they don't have any word of mouth
Hax Or report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1