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.

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.

John Romano and Evan Carroll, creators of The Digital Beyond, appeared on WRAL in Raleigh, NC giving some helpful advice about preparing for the digital afterlife. You can read the full story online at www.wral.com.

We also have a checklist to help you plan for your digital afterlife.

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Etan Horowitz at the Orlando Sentinel has written two articles that mention The Digital Beyond.

The first, “What happens to your virtual world after you die?” is about the fate of online accounts after death. He talks about how people have been affected and what they can do to protect themselves.

The other is an article “How Facebook, MySpace, Gmail and other handle your accounts when you die” where Etan has written a good guide about how Facebook, MySpace, Gmail, Yahoo mail, and Windows Live mail handle death.

Cheers Etan. Spread the word.

John and I make no bones about how we came to start a blog about the digital afterlife. We pitched the idea for a panel talking about this for the 2009 SXSW Interactive Festival. After its selection as a core conversation, we devoted ourselves to study the topic in preparation for the event. The response at SXSW 09 was overwhelmingly positive, with a heated, hour-long discussion amongst attendees. Shortly thereafter (likely by coincidence and not causality) a deluge of services came about promising to help individuals deal with digital death and afterlife. In response, we created this blog and started preparations for SXSW 2010. Now that the panel submissions are closed, I’ll share with you our proposal.

Become Immortal, Understanding the Digital Afterlife
When you leave the mortal world, your identity will ascend into the cloud. But the complications of digital preservation pose serious questions. Our panel of legal, technical and cultural experts will discuss the control, format and sustainability of the digital beyond.

Here are the questions we plan to address:

1. Does the past have value? Should we make an effort to preserve it?
2. Is it too old school to die and be dead?
3. With the onset of widespread preservation, will the past lose its significance? Quantity or quality?
4. Is the current deluge of digital afterlife services sustainable? Will they really outlive me?
5. Public or private? What would an open-source model for digital preservation look like?
6. How can current advancements in data portability across social networking services support this goal?
7. What new legal structures and precedents does this require?
8. Are digital personas an accurate reflection of an individual?
9. Will my legacy be more significant if I leave my content distributed across multiple sites like Flickr, Facebook and Twitter?
10. How will the wealth of preserved information change the way that future generations look back at us?

We’ll be asking for your vote in August, when the panel picker goes live.  Hopefully your support (a.k.a. vote) will help us give this topic a proper panel discussion with other digital afterlife experts.

Update: Here’s the link to the PanelPicker: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/3854

The New York Times ran an article on May 20th with some good legal insight into the issues surrounding death online. We’ve talked about the need for a “digital executor” before, but Patricia H. Char, a lawyer with K&L Gates in Seattle, warns that isn’t enough. Without a durable power of attorney document your executor may be accessing your accounts illegally, and that opens all sorts of issues, especially if other relatives accuse them of misuse.

Read more from the New York Times: When Others Need the Keys to Your Online Kingdom

Also on May 20th, WWAY in Wilmington, NC aired a story called Online After Death.

Two new articles popped up.

Death Often Brings Disputes Over Online Lives
by Yuki Noguchi

New services promise online life after death
by Mallory Simon

We’ve seen comments about our presentation at SXSW out on the Web. Thanks for all the great comments.

Companies are being born out of death by Lilly Rockwell at Statesman.com

Digital Immortals or Just Noise From the Dead? by Laura on the Dell community Web site

Outside the Frame: South by Southwest 2009 by Amanda Hirsch at PBS.org

Panel: Who Will Check My Email After I Die? by Lilly Rockwell at austin360.com

What happens to your content after you die? at SXTXSTATE

SXSW Wrap Up by Craig Rowe

Thanks to all the attendees at the SXSW festival who came out for our core conversation “Who Will Check My Email After I Die.” We had a great time and a great conversation.

We think it is a conversation that will be the center of a lot more attention in the years to come.We hope to host a panel next year where we have an archivist, archeologist/sociologist, a lawyer, and a person from the business community. Some representation from the social networks and from Google would be great too.

For me the highlight of the conversation was when we discussed products that allow you to release content (email, videos, photos) after you die. We were talking about other possible triggers that could release content. The birth of a child. Graduation. Marriage.

This idea blew my mind. The idea that you could start conversations and communicate with loved ones years after your death is a spectacular idea. @qthrul asked does “Afterlife = cron job?”

What were the things that made you go “hmmm”?