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Facebook Gives Death a Makeover
Gravestones are so 1.0, site spins; try memorializing your page
By Harry Kimball
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Posted Oct 29, 09 2:08 PM CDT
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(Newser)
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Facebook has responded to yet another qualm arising from its revamp last week. This one was actually sort of serious: Users were inundated with suggestions that they “reconnect” with friends who—though their Facebook pages were still active—had in reality shuffled off this mortal coil. “Would that I could,” one miffed user tweeted before signing off as "#MassiveFacebookFail." Facebook used the unfortunate situation to unveil—or remind people of—its “memorializing” feature.
That sort of snafu is “why it's important when someone passes away that their friends or family contact Facebook to request that a profile be memorialized,” the social networking site’s security chief blogs. Memorializing, Time notes, takes the dead user’s page out of circulation but leaves it up for friends and family to post remembrances. Of course, those friends and family actually have to prove the death with proper documentation; they can also request the page be removed permanently.