Update: Facebook just opened up FB Connect as well in a self-serve fashion. It’s mano-a-mano.

The battle over who will control access to your online identity is heating up. In the wake of more and more partners finally starting to take a shine to Facebook’s competing FB Connect (which we just implemented on Techcrunch), Google’s Friend Connect is now in an open beta. Before it was in a limited preview release, but now any website can add Google Friend Connect as a login option.

Google Friend Connect is OpenSocial’s answer to Facebook Connect. It lets other websites accept a member’s OpenSocial username and password to log into their sites. More importantly, it also lets websites access users’ social data, which includes friend lists, profile information, feed messages, reviews, ratings and the like.

Since it is based on OpenID, visitors to a Website that adds Friend Connect code will be able to sign in using their Google, Yahoo, AIM, or OpenID usernames and passwords. The Websites will also be able to add any OpenSocial apps developed by third parties. And it supports the OAuth data portability standard.

When you drill down into the technical details, there are some differences between Friend Connect and FB Connect. But ultimately, what is at stake here is what will become the identity and data portability standard on the Web, and who will control it. While Friend Connect is taking a more open-standards approach, Facebook has the users and the momentum. Who are you betting on?

By ALEX MINDLIN
Published: November 30, 2008

Canadian Internet users are far more likely than Americans to use a social networking Web site, according to September figures released by the research firm comScore. That number is consistent with Canadians’ generally heavy use of sophisticated Internet features like online video. “We joke that it’s because of those long winter nights up there,” said Andrew Lipsman, a senior analyst at comScore.

But it also reflects the broader truth that the popularity of such Web sites, and which services are at the top, can vary sharply in neighboring countries.

“One site may catch on in a certain country, and another may catch on elsewhere,” said Mr. Lipsman. “Often it’s whichever one gained prominence in the early phase of the game.”

For example, Google’s Orkut service, which has a third of Facebook’s traffic in the United States, is the dominant social networking site in both India and Brazil. ALEX MINDLIN

*Includes countries with a total Internet population of at least 10 million unique visitors in September 2008.

**Excludes traffic from public computers, such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones/PDAs.

“For Internet users in Brazil, social networking continues to flourish as a hugely popular activity,” said Alex Banks, managing director of Latin America for comScore. “One likely reason for social networking’s success in Brazil is that its concept of online community closely aligns with the culture in Brazil, which is also centered on a strong sense of community and social activity.”

Numbers Via Comscore

Good news for worried parents: All those hours their teenagers spend socializing on the Internet are not a bad thing, according to a new study by the MacArthur Foundation.

“It may look as though kids are wasting a lot of time hanging out with new media, whether it’s on MySpace or sending instant messages,” said Mizuko Ito, lead researcher on the study, “Living and Learning With New Media.” “But their participation is giving them the technological skills and literacy they need to succeed in the contemporary world. They’re learning how to get along with others, how to manage a public identity, how to create a home page.”

The study, conducted from 2005 to last summer, describes new-media usage but does not measure its effects.

“It certainly rings true that new media are inextricably woven into young people’s lives,” said Vicki Rideout, vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation and director of its program for the study of media and health. “Ethnographic studies like this are good at describing how young people fit social media into their lives. What they can’t do is document effects. This highlights the need for larger, nationally representative studies.”

Ms. Ito, a research scientist in the department of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, said that some parental concern about the dangers of Internet socializing might result from a misperception.

“Those concerns about predators and stranger danger have been overblown,” she said. “There’s been some confusion about what kids are actually doing online. Mostly, they’re socializing with their friends, people they’ve met at school or camp or sports.”

The study, part of a $50 million project on digital and media learning, used several teams of researchers to interview more than 800 young people and their parents and to observe teenagers online for more than 5,000 hours. Because of the adult sense that socializing on the Internet is a waste of time, the study said, teenagers reported many rules and restrictions on their electronic hanging out, but most found ways to work around such barriers that let them stay in touch with their friends steadily throughout the day.

“Teens usually have a ‘full-time intimate community’ with whom they communicate in an always-on mode via mobile phones and instant messaging,” the study said.

This is not news to a cluster of Bronx teenagers, gathered after school on Wednesday to tell a reporter about their social routines. All of them used MySpace and instant messaging to stay in touch with a dozen or two of their closest friends every evening. “As soon as I get home, I turn on my computer,” said a 15-year-old boy who started his MySpace page four years ago. “My MySpace is always on, and when I get a message on MySpace, it sends a text message to my phone. It’s not an obsession; it’s a necessity.” (School rules did not permit using students’ names without written parental permission, which could not be immediately obtained.)

Only one student, a 14-year-old girl, had ever opted out — and she lasted only a week.

“It didn’t work,” she said. “You become addicted. You can’t live without it.”

In a situation familiar to many parents, the study describes two 17-year-olds, dating for more than a year, who wake up and log on to their computers between taking showers and doing their hair, talk on their cellphones as they travel to school, exchange text messages through the school day, then get together after school to do homework — during which time they also play a video game — talk on the phone during the evening, perhaps ending the night with a text-messaged “I love you.”

Teenagers also use new media to explore new romantic relationships, through interactions casual enough to ensure no loss of face if the other party is not interested.

The study describes two early Facebook messages, or “wall posts,” by teenagers who eventually started dating. First, the girl posted a message saying, “hey … hm. wut to say? iono lol/well I left you a comment … u sud feel SPECIAL haha.” (Translation: Hmm … what to say? I don’t know. Laugh out loud. Well I left you a comment … You should feel special.)

A day later, the boy replied, “hello there … umm I don’t know what to say, but at least I wrote something …”

While online socializing is ubiquitous, many young people move on to a period of tinkering and exploration, as they look for information online, customize games or experiment with digital media production, the study found.

For example, a Brooklyn teenager did a Google image search to look at a video card and find out where in a computer such cards are, then installed his own.

What the study calls “geeking out” is the most intense Internet use, in which young people delve deeply into a particular area of interest, often through a connection to an online interest group.

“New media allow for a degree of freedom and autonomy for youth that is less apparent in a classroom setting,” the study said. “Youth respect one another’s authority online, and they are often more motivated to learn from peers than from adults.”

Cheng Wu is the co-founder and chairman of Azuki Systems.

As mobile social networks gain popularity, many are wondering how to ride the wave of this phenomenon. Leveraging the 3.3 billion potential mobile screens and the viral capabilities of social media, new forms of collaboration and media sharing will emerge and drive new sources of revenue.

As a result, we’ll see mobile social networking expand to build community around Web, user-generated and existing premium content – allowing users to discover and enjoy relevant content, rate and comment on high interest points, and share these elements with friends and colleagues, leading to a more vibrant, dynamic environment across both mobile and the desktop.

The Bad News

Today’s mobile social networks are admittedly primitive – confined to two fairly unattractive choices. Users can:

1. Access a mobile portal in an existing desktop community, where the experience is flat and text-oriented, or

2. Explicitly join a new mobile community in isolation.

It’s clear that change is needed.

The Good News

The broad availability of rich media-capable handsets is a harbinger of change, and with the increasing availability of platforms to enable interactive mobile media services, we’re also seeing the world of mobile evolve into a highly engaging and interactive means of sharing personalized and relevant content.

This evolving breed of mobile phones, along with the accessibility of one’s favorite content on mobile in bite-sized chunks that provide simplified navigation, is redefining the way people interact around content services. Mobile users are actively involved in sharing this ‘snackable’ content with friends and peers, voicing their opinions in online blogs, and viewing rich media content on a small, yet highly capable, mobile screen.

Additionally, mobile social networks are starting to incorporate location-awareness and contextualization capabilities to fine-tune the mobile experience and allow for more fluid formation of communities of interest around local events, news, sports or as an interesting clip that is quickly disseminated among friends. The viral, real-time nature, as well as the inherent contextual awareness, will expand both viewership and monetization options for content publishers, mobile operators and social networking brands.

What’s Next?

Interactive, Snackable Content
In order for mobile social networking to reach its potential, it needs to enable and be driven by interactive mobile content. This interactivity (in the form of rating, ranking, commenting, etc.) is key to enhancing the ‘stickiness’ of personalized and targeted mobile content in a snackable form. In addition, with the inclusion of these features, relevancy to the individual user is also greatly enhanced, increasing the likelihood of participation.

Focus on Content, Not the Community
To be successful and wide-spread, mobile social networking should revolve around the sharing of interactive, snackable, relevant content – and hinge much less on the sharing solely within a particular community. This new model implies cross-community dissemination, whereby group members are fluid and determined based on relevancy of said content. For this reason, it is important to keep in mind that adopting a one-size-fits-all approach for addressing social networks will be a mistake, and mobile users should not be pushed into any one particular network – but rather extend collaboration across Facebook, MySpace and other sites.

Integrate the Data
Mobile social networking will prove to be more about integrating mobile social data with desktop data and less about mobile specific data mining. Community data should be independent of the device that is used to access it. It needs to be a cloud resource in the Internet, accessible from all access devices including desktop PC’s and mobile handsets. Content publishers need to be able to leverage the existing content that is available on the desktop, and then have the ability to optimize it for personalized interaction on a mobile device.

Context-Enabled Social Communities
Mobile social networking also will involve real-time functionality and contextual awareness, with location-based services driving communication among physical communities. In that manner, and as interactive local content is rapidly disseminated, enthusiasm is generated about local happenings and local vendors, increasing the likelihood of service monetization and the overall success of mobile retailing.

Monetize
It follows then that mobile social networking represents the opportunity to monetize based on layered viral social activities over original content. For example, a pre-roll advertisement optimized for mobile consumption stands to be distributed to thousands of mobile users through user-initiated sharing of content on social networking sites. This radically increases CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) and drives revenue beyond a publishers own direct marketing efforts. Instead of the Web model of driving “eyeballs” to the ads, users drive the ads to the eyeballs.

There have already been some initial successes in mobile social networking that are now laying the foundation for this massive new category of advertising. By creating a more personalized experience for mobile users through contextual and bite-sized content, users naturally interact and share more through mobile mash-ups of this snackable content, involving contacts from their social networks. This creates an opportunity for viral mobile advertising where embedded mobile ads are shared along with the contextual content.

With interactive, personalized and snackable mobile content, the mobilization of fixed-Web social networks is indeed poised for growth and success.

Cheng Wu is the co-founder and chairman of Azuki Systems, which provides the industry’s first comprehensive interactive mobile media services platform, and is responsible for the company’s vision and corporate strategy. Wu is a successful serial entrepreneur and well-acclaimed industry veteran, having founded and led numerous businesses including ArrowPoint (acquired by Cisco for $5.7 billion), Arris Networks (acquired by Cascade Communications for $217 million) and Acopia (acquired by F5 Networks for $210 million).

Image courtesy of iStockPhoto, lindsayking, tforgo

By DAVID CARR
Published: November 9, 2008

In February 2007, a friend called Marc Andreessen, a founder of Netscape and a board member of Facebook, and asked if he wanted to meet with a man with an idea that sounded preposterous on its face.

Always game for something new, Mr. Andreessen headed to the San Francisco airport late one night to hear the guy out. A junior member of a large and powerful organization with a thin, but impressive, résumé, he was about to take on far more powerful forces in a battle for leadership.

He wondered if social networking, with its tremendous communication capabilities and aggressive database development, might help him beat the overwhelming odds facing him.

“It was like a guy in a garage who was thinking of taking on the biggest names in the business,” Mr. Andreessen recalled. “What he was doing shouldn’t have been possible, but we see a lot of that out here and then something clicks. He was clearly supersmart and very entrepreneurial, a person who saw the world and the status quo as malleable.”

And as it turned out, President-elect Barack Obama was right.

Like a lot of Web innovators, the Obama campaign did not invent anything completely new. Instead, by bolting together social networking applications under the banner of a movement, they created an unforeseen force to raise money, organize locally, fight smear campaigns and get out the vote that helped them topple the Clinton machine and then John McCain and the Republicans.

As a result, when he arrives at 1600 Pennsylvania, Mr. Obama will have not just a political base, but a database, millions of names of supporters who can be engaged almost instantly. And there’s every reason to believe that he will use the network not just to campaign, but to govern. His e-mail message to supporters on Tuesday night included the line, “We have a lot of work to do to get our country back on track, and I’ll be in touch soon about what comes next.” The incoming administration is already open for business on the Web at Change.gov, a digital gateway for the transition.

The Bush campaign arrived at the White House with a conviction that it would continue a conservative revolution with the help of Karl Rove’s voter lists, phone banks and direct mail. But those tools were crude and expensive compared with what the Obama camp is bringing to the Oval Office.

“I think it is very significant that he was the first post-boomer candidate for president,” Mr. Andreessen said. “Other politicians I have met with are always impressed by the Web and surprised by what it could do, but their interest sort of ended in how much money you could raise. He was the first politician I dealt with who understood that the technology was a given and that it could be used in new ways.”

The juxtaposition of a networked, open-source campaign and a historically imperial office will have profound implications and raise significant questions. Special-interest groups and lobbyists will now contend with an environment of transparency and a president who owes them nothing. The news media will now contend with an administration that can take its case directly to its base without even booking time on the networks.

More profoundly, while many people think that President-elect Obama is a gift to the Democratic Party, he could actually hasten its demise. Political parties supply brand, ground troops, money and relationships, all things that Mr. Obama already owns.

And his relationships are not the just traditional ties of Democrats – teachers’ unions, party faithful and Hollywood moneybags – but a network of supporters who used a distributed model of phone banking to organize and get out the vote, helped raise a record-breaking $600 million, and created all manner of media clips that were viewed millions of times. It was an online movement that begot offline behavior, including producing youth voter turnout that may have supplied the margin of victory.

“Thomas Jefferson used newspapers to win the presidency, F.D.R. used radio to change the way he governed, J.F.K. was the first president to understand television, and Howard Dean saw the value of the Web for raising money,” said Ranjit Mathoda, a lawyer and money manager who blogs at Mathoda.com. “But Senator Barack Obama understood that you could use the Web to lower the cost of building a political brand, create a sense of connection and engagement, and dispense with the command and control method of governing to allow people to self-organize to do the work.”

All of the Obama supporters who traded their personal information for a ticket to a rally or an e-mail alert about the vice presidential choice, or opted in on Facebook or MyBarackObama can now be mass e-mailed at a cost of close to zero. And instead of the constant polling that has been a motor of presidential governance, an Obama White House can use the Web to measure voter attitudes.

“When you think about it, a campaign is a start-up business,” Mr. Mathoda said. “Other than his speech in 2004 at the convention and his two books, Mr. Obama had very little in terms of brand to begin with, and he was up against Senator Clinton, who had all the traditional sources of power, and then Senator McCain. But he had the right people and the right idea to take them on. When you think about it, it was like he was going up against Google and Yahoo. And he won.”

There is tremendous power in opening citizen access to government – think of how much good will and support Mayor Michael Bloomberg garnered by coming up with 311, a one-stop phone number for New Yorkers who had a problem.

But now Senator Obama’s 20-month conversation with the electorate enters a new phase. There is sense of ownership, a kind of possessive entitlement, on the part of the people who worked to elect him. The shorthand for his organizing Web site, “MyBO,” says it all.

“People will continue to expect a conversation, a two-way relationship that is a give and take,” said Thomas Gensemer, managing partner of Blue State Digital, which helped conceive and put into effect Obama’s digital outreach. “People who were part of the campaign will opt in to political or governing tracks and those relationships will continue in some form.”

The founders of America wanted a government that reflected its citizens, but would be at remove from the baser impulses of the mob. The mob, flush with victory, is at hand, but instead of pitchforks and lanterns, they have broadband and YouTube. Like every other presidency, the Obama administration will have its battles with the media, but that may seem like patty-cake if it runs afoul of the self-publishing, self-organizing democracy it helped create – say, by delaying health care legislation or breaking a promise on taxes.

That’s the thing about pipes today: they run both ways.

“It’s clear there has been a dramatic shift,” said Andrew Rasiej, the founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, an annual conference about the intersection of politics and technology. “Any politician who fails to recognize that we are in a post-party era with a new political ecology in which connecting like minds and forming a movement is so much easier will not be around long.

“Yes, we have met Big Brother, the one who is always watching. And Big Brother is us.”

In a time of stock market crisis, bailouts and a weak dollar, LinkedIn still raises $22.7 million in funding. How? It’s a relevant site with a number of useful resources for professionals and businesses. Meanwhile, the launch of the site’s application platform last week puts the spotlight back on this phenomenally useful social network.

Many folks involved in social media are so ADD driven to the latest social network, they fail to fully explore and make use of the networks that they are already part of. Enter LinkedIn, a haven for professional networking with an executive representation of all of the Fortune 500 companies. LinkedIn has a lot to offer regardless of where you are in your career, especially with the economy the way it is.

What Exactly is LinkedIn?

LinkedIn has been around all the way back since 2003, and many people use it differently, so I asked the Twitterati, “What exactly is LinkedIn?”

As we can see from the replies above, some people consider LinkedIn to be a full-fledged social network, while others see it as a mere contact list or business network. The devil is in the details.

Should Businesses Care About LinkedIn?

Of course they should. LinkedIn has over 20 million members. LinkedIn can be used by businesses and departments of any shape and size, and requires little social media know-how. Search Engine Guide’s Jennifer Laycock recommends LinkedIn to small businesses that are looking to start using social media but just don’t have a lot of time to do so. Here’s an HR perspective from Jim Stroud of The Recruiter’s Lounge:

“LinkedIn is a tool recruiters cannot ignore. Recruiters who do not want to be bogged down with resumes turn to LinkedIn to find quality candidates and their peers. On the flip side, some recruiters use it to build up a massive list of contacts that they can use for email campaigns. This of course, is not the intention of LinkedIn, but its a fact of life. LinkedIn is becoming the next “Monster” with more and more recruiters turning to it.”

How Do You Get the Most Out of LinkedIn?

The old adage that “it isn’t what you know, it’s who you know” still holds value. LinkedIn takes this thought one step further, making it “who you will know soon to be of utmost importance.” Using LinkedIn, I’ve trained small businesses to spread their wings and get connected with companies that they might otherwise have thought were beyond reach, and to the persons they were looking for in those companies.

So, how do you meet people? Well, you can’t throw sheep or sick your zombies after them. There’s also no chat. And guess what? That’s totally fine. Many who use instant messaging aggregate different chat networks into a single app such as Digsby, Trillian, or Pidgin. So who needs another chat app?

Here are seven features LinkedIn does have that you should take advantage of:

Quick Lookup – Look up who you are having that next business meeting with. You’ll be able to break the ice right away.

Q&A – Post questions to others in your industry. The Yahoo Answers look and feel of this feature has definitely made LinkedIn more active and interesting. A public question can be responded to by anyone that works in really any discipline. Such was the case where Derek Edmond spotted a discussion occurring about the trustworthiness of SEO.

Recommendations – Have clients or co-workers post recommendations, which future employers and clients can view to gauge your skill and level of trustworthiness. Conversely, if you’re an employer, these imply trustworthiness for a potential freelancer or new hire.

Background checks – Look up potential new hires or freelancers. This should be right up there in an HR manager’s toolbelt.

See what your competition is up to – Keep track of what others in your industry are up to. Network updates gives you a feed of recent activity, so you can see who your connections have friended, groups they have joined, and the people they have recommended. You’ll even be able to see when people are switching jobs.

Introductions – Use people you already know to help make introductions. It’s a great way to get in the door with a company you need to contact.

Open Networking – Go out and become a LION! You are an open networker.

What’s Next?

LinkedIn has made a lot of recent updates and additions, including:

Group mania – LinkedIn has been making great strides in the groups area, having added search within groups, discussions within groups, groups you might like, and sharing groups. When you think about how much engagement and adoption groups have brought to Facebook, you’ll really begin to appreciate these changes.

Profile page – since most LinkedIn users spend a great deal of their time on profile pages, the subtle UI (user interface) changes done to the profile page are a great update.

iPhone app – LinkedIn has a pretty spiffy iPhone app that’s worth trying out.

While I really appreciate these additions, I think it would be great for LinkedIn to tell beginner users more about why to use the service. Similar to Twitter using the CommonCraft show’s Twitter in Plain English, LinkedIn could use its LinkedIn CommonCraft video to make beginner users see LinkedIn’s true value of building connections to help accomplish your business goals.

What are your thoughts?

How do you get the most out of LinkedIn? Tell us about success you’ve had on the service in the comments.

Brian Wallace is a social media consultant – get it touch with him on his blog, or follow him on Twitter and Plurk. And yes, he’s on LinkedIn too.

nalysts Explore Social Networking Impact on Government at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2008, 3-7 November in Cannes, France

Egham, UK, October 23, 2008 —

By 2011, 70 per cent of social computing deployments in government that achieve business benefits will do so in unplanned or unexpected ways, according to Gartner, Inc. Government organisations around the world are showing great interest in social computing, yet deployment so far is relatively limited.

“The current global financial turmoil bolsters the case for government adoption of social networks as technology-budget cuts make tapping into societal resources, such as voluntary groups, philanthropists, associations and social network groups essential to complement weaker government action in some critical areas,” said Andrea Di Maio, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.

According to Mr Di Maio, there are plenty of government-initiated networks and – like any such network – they succeed only when they have a clear and magnetic purpose such as Diplopedia, a wiki created by the US State Department that supports collaboration across intelligence and foreign affairs agencies.  “However, the most promising, and yet, most disruptive, communities are those created outside government. Examples in the UK include Netmums, a community of parents dealing with child-care issues, and PledgeBank, which allows users to set up pledges and then encourages other people to sign up to them,” he said.

Today, the primary role of social networks for governments is to facilitate the exchange of information and to establish novel collaboration patterns, often across organisational boundaries. “For example, a case manager in human services is responsible for identifying clients in need through outreach or referral, and conducting a comprehensive social and financial assessment. In the future, he or she will be part of a more complex socio-ecosystem, including a voluntary sector, online communities and individuals who play a fundamental role through all the different phases. Their role will shift from managing a case to ensuring that community resources are complemented where needed,” said Mr Di Maio.

Boundaries in government are blurring at every level and driving the uptake of social computing. Horizontal business processes such as financial management, HR and procurement are subject to increased sharing across agencies and even jurisdictions. This means that government organisations no longer own or control them. Instead they are becoming clients to other organisations leading to increased adoption of social media. In addition, government IT infrastructure is subject to consolidation efforts and will be progressively commoditised and challenged by cloud-computing solutions.

Gartner points out that the benefits of social computing — when accrued — will rarely occur in the context of government-driven initiatives. For example, governments’ desire to retain ownership and control of the network, through restrictive participation policies, will be detriment to magnetism.

Gartner recommends that governments engage selected employees in finding external social networks relevant to the agency and its domain of government. They should also ensure that the use of social computing inside and between government organisations is based on a clear and compelling purpose – which is likely to be something that they cannot ‘engineer’. “Instead, they should recognise that spontaneity is needed for success,” said Mr Di Maio.

Mr Di Maio added that social networks require little investment to start so, at a time when budgets are increasingly tight, such technology is welcome. Social networks have worked well to aggregate people and information to face natural disasters. People look both for peer support and for government when times are tough.

Gartner predicts the execution of many government processes in human services, tax and revenue, health care and education will involve individuals who are neither employees nor contractors. Examples include replacement of some human services functions such as online collection of charitable donations to be directed to people in need combined with online ‘time banks’ through which citizens provide time to help others.

“The future of government is a very different government and, in some cases, no government at all,” concluded Mr Di Maio.

Mr Di Maio will provide more detailed analysis on the impact that social networking is having on governments during the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2008, taking place on 3-7 November in Cannes, France. Gartner Symposium/ITxpo is the IT industry’s largest and most strategic conference, providing business leaders with a look at the future of IT. More than 3,000 senior business and IT strategists will gather for the insights, tools and solutions they need to ensure their IT initiatives are key contributors to and drivers of their company’s success. Gartner’s annual Symposium/ITxpo events are key components of attendees’ annual planning efforts. They rely on Gartner Symposium/ITxpo to gain insight into how their organisations can use IT to address business challenges and improve operational efficiency. Additional information is available at www.gartner.com/eu/symposiumfall

Members of the media can register for the event by contacting Laurence Goasduff, Gartner PR on + 44 (0) 1784 267195 or at laurence.goasduff@gartner.com

Additional information on social computing and government is in the Gartner report “The Business Impact of Social Computing on Government”. The report is on Gartner’s website at
The Business Impact of Social Computing on Government

By David Chartier | Published: October 26, 2008 – 03:30PM CT

It is safe to say that anyone reading this probably has one or several accounts on any of the major social networking sites. The same can be said about our family and friends. All of these sites pretty much serve the same function. They allow us to post and share our innermost thoughts, share pictures, music, goofy applications, and network with friends, family and coworkers.

Social networking sites may in time change ownership. They and the data stored on them will almost certainly exist longer than their creators. All too often, these profiles serve as online memorials, obituaries, and a last place for loved ones and the general public to honor the dead.

This is a subject that has made me very uneasy. Due to a recent death in my family, this topic keeps repeating back and forth in my subconsciousness. This particular family member did not have a social networking profile, and was not active online. But if they had, some underlying questions would need to be answered:

1. Do we have the password for the social networking accounts?

2. If not, what are the next steps for gaining access to the accounts?

3. Do we make the profile private if the family wishes to grieve silently?

4. Do we leave the profile intact and public?

5. Do we let the profile become an online memorial for the deceased?

In an email exchange with a New York Times reporter, Tom Anderson, the president of MySpace, said “the company does not allow people to assume control of the MySpace accounts of users after their deaths.” “MySpace handles each incident on a case-by-case basis when notified, and will work with families to respect their wishes,” he added, also noting that at the request of survivors the company would take down pages of deceased users.

Human nature and the fascination with death

Delving further into the subject, I ended up on a site that I had not visited since its creation in 2006. The site is MyDeathSpace and it bills itself as “Your global resource for MySpace.com member obituaries.” It’s an archival site that contains news articles, online obituaries, and other publicly available information about deceased MySpace members.

There are more than 12,000 profiles listed on the site, mainly of younger people. If you need a dose of what reality is, visit this site. I was overcome with shock, horror, and sadness upon learning how some of these people died. Most of these deaths were gruesome and premature, and resulted from accidents, suicides, murders, etc. The site also shows the profiles of many of the criminals suspected and charged with many of these heinous crimes. Overall, MyDeathSpace shows how reckless and senseless society can be.

Online shrines for the family and friends

Reading the memorials and newspaper blurbs gave me a brief snapshot into people’s lives. Sadly, the more I read, the more my curiosity was peaked. I wanted to know more about how the person died, and how they lived. I skimmed through the comments left on their MySpace profiles, and looked through their blog postings, pictures etc. The Majority of the profiles I saw had last login dates well past the person’s date of death.

Family members of the deceased have since logged in, and turned these profiles into online shrines. They monitor the comments, various dates of importance, and in a small way continue to let their loved one live on, perhaps forever thanks to cyberspace. I can see this helping in the healing and grieving process for families of the deceased. The profiles reflect this for the most part, as they are updated and kept in meticulous condition. It’s a way for the family to maintain connections with the deceased’s friends, while also allowing the grieving process to take place in a global public forum.

Comments are left by friends, family members and random strangers. I guess with the belief that the deceased person, in another dimension might be reading it. Many of the comments are written as though the individual were alive today. When in reality, it has been several years since the death. Birthdays, holidays, and significant dates of importance, of both the lives of the author, and the deceased keep the profiles active in memoriam.

Profiles left behind

Then there are other profiles of members who are frozen in time. The last login dates for their MySpace profiles are often the day before, or several days before they met their fateful demise. The pages were last updated by the deceased, and have not been touched since then.

These are the profiles that are especially ghostly. Their last pictures, their last words, and their favorite song usually decorate their profile. Chatter to and from friends about their upcoming plans, and about what they did the days and nights before, is all that remains. I wonder if the surviving family members even know if these profiles exist.

I think it’s only fitting for us to live on in cyberspace when we perish from this earth. I certainly would not have an issue with my family members honoring me in such a way. I also realize that not every family is comfortable with such an open and public grieving process.

One comment I read from a murdered teenager’s mother sticks in my head. The mother basically said, “It’s been three years since my daughter’s death, it’s unhealthy for the grieving process to still be taking place.” She was referring to her daughter’s MySpace profile being flooded daily with encouraging words of support. The fascination with death is only human nature. We fear, embrace and must learn about the unknown. Sites like MyDeathSpace exist for this reason.