Hi Friends.  I’ve submitted an idea to speak at Ignite here at home in Raleigh.  I would appreciate your support by voting for my idea.  Here’s the summary:

Last Tweet and testament? Email from the grave? Funerals in World of Warcraft? When you die, your identity will ascend into the cloud—the Internet, that is. But you won’t be around to push the buttons on your Facebook, Twitter, Email, or Web sites. You’ll need somebody or something to do it for you. Learn how planning today can secure your own (digital) immortality.

For those of you who don’t know, the Ignite format is different.  Speakers get exactly five minutes and 20 slides to say whatever they would like.  This seems like a great opportunity to raise awareness of digital afterlife issues to a captivated audience.  Thanks for the support.

While doing some research recently, I started to think more about the  fields of study that together form a foundation for the digital afterlife.  I have always maintained that this is a multi-faceted topic, but I didn’t realize how true that statement was.

Identity – online content is a projection of our identity into the digital world.  E-mails, photos, connections and conversations provide a corpus of data allowing for unprecedented study and preservation of identity.

Human-computer interaction – the study of how we interact with computers.  Closely linked to identity, computers have become our companions in life.  They’re contents provide records of our thinking, communications and pleasures.

Estate planning – the traditional practice of law that helped individuals plan the disposition of their assets.  Our digital assets are becoming increasingly valuable.  It’s time for a legally-sound process to protect them and allow us to pass them along to the next generation.

Funeral service - end of life care and remembrance.  The way we remember and honor the decreased is changing.  Online memorials and gatherings are an increasing occurrence and are no less real than their offline counterparts.

Archives and preservation – archivists have worked for years to collect and preserve tangible information for centuries.  Now in an digital world they are working to collect and preserve not just physical, but “born digital” assets as well.

I’m sure that I missed a few.  Can you think of any others?  Comment it up, folks.

The Washington Post just published an article about the digital afterlife from Mike Rosenwald.  It’s a great overview of the industry and provides a few personal stories from those affected by death on the Internet.

Jeremy Toeman, founder of Legacy Locker, was quoted in the article.

“We’re in an era now where people are really going to have to pay attention to what their online assets are,” Toeman said. “Five years ago, that terminology — digital assets — didn’t even make sense. Now it does.”

I couldn’t agree with his statement more.  I’m excited to see what will happen in the months to come for the growing industry of digital afterlife services.  Earlier this month I wrote some predictions for 2010, and the points that Rosenwald, Toeman and others make in the article are further proof that we’ll see more growth this year.

As an aside, I’m pleased to learn that Legacy Locker has over 10,000 subscribers.  It’s one of the first signs I’ve seen of success in the industry.  I hope that others are seeing similar success.

It’s that time of year and there’s one thing that the Internet is not short of–predictions about what will happen in 2010.  And like most others out there, we have an opinion too.  Let’s take a brief look back at 2009.

Without doubt, 2009 was the emerging year for the digital afterlife.  Since we started keeping track in June, the digital afterlife has appeared in blogs and the media nearly 60 times, and I’m sure we missed a few articles along the way. 2009 also brought a deluge of online services that help individuals manage their digital afterlife or memorialize their loved ones.  We didn’t keep up with the launch date for each new service, but there we learned of at least 10 new services in 2009.  With all of this buzz it’s safe to say that more and more people are thinking about the digital afterlife.

So what’s next?  In 2010 awareness of digital afterlife issues will increase and the industry will continue to grow at a rapid pace.  Trendwatching.com says that the digital afterlife is a part of an overall trend of “profile myning,” or taking control of your own profiles.  Internet users are increasingly aware of their online identity and are taking steps to control it.

With personal profiles (which are the nucleus of one’s personal brand) representing an ever-greater emotional and financial value, expect a burgeoning market for services that protect, store, and, in case of emergencies/death, arrange handing over of one’s digital estate to trusted others. – trendwatching.com

Standards
There is not yet a best practice for dealing with deceased users’ content.  Practices vary across sites and many sites do not have a standard practice in place.  We expect to see efforts form around standardization, as more attorneys and estate planners gain interest in the subject.

More content
The idea that personal computers should primarily use local storage (aka your hard drive) is becoming a thing of the past.  Flickr is great for photos and Google Docs is starting to perform as well as desktop-based software.  The recent Chrome OS more or less solidifies the fact that the browser is the new operating system.  This trend means more content in the cloud that will require afterlife planning.

Competition
The digital afterlife industry is still very young and there’s no clear leader.  Right now, services can roughly be divided into three categories,  estate planning, posthumous messaging or online memorials. We suspect that like any emerging industry, the competition will heat up and these services will work to differentiate from others.

Increased digital component in funerals
Hong Kong recently turned to online memorials to help deal with the shortage of burial plots.  Funeral homes across the US are using DVD slide shows or other multimedia during services.  With some places replacing graves with online memorials and technology making its way into the funeral home, we expect more to come on this front.  Too bad Eternal Space didn’t hold on longer.

In summary 2010 will be another emerging year, but will be full of exciting developments for the industry.  We’ll be here at The Digital Beyond to keep you informed.

Photo credit to Atomische on Flickr.

What’s Your Preference? What do you want to happen to your Facebook profile. Should it:

1. be turned into a memorial
2. be archived
3. be deleted
4. something else?

Let us know what you think.