Facebook's Inability to Record User Deaths Leads to Suggestions to Reconnect With Dead Friends

In the beginning, death was a rare and untimely occurrence in the Facebook domain, as the site was dominated by youth. With the recent rise in older members however, the social networking giant has experienced a higher level of death.

The site's approach to the death of its members has progressed over time. Originally, a member profile would be immediately erased if they were discovered to have died. Now though, it is becoming increasingly desirable to memorialise profile pages in order to create a focal point for tributes and to aid the mourning process.

It is an understandably difficult task to keep track of 500 million users, and so one may forgive the company for failing to act with the appropriate level of tact in such cases. However, Facebook are working on a solution to the problem, in order to prevent itself making the the potentially upsetting reminders to contact relatives or friends who have passed away.

At the moment, spiders are unable to detect and translate words and phrases such as "R.I.P", or "You will be missed". Facebook are currently looking to program a means of enabling their algorithms to pick up on such occurrences, and the implementation of software capable of tracking such signifiers before referring the findings to a human reviewer is one proposed solution.

UK SEO experts may see this as a solution laced with difficulties, and a large potential for error. The number of alternative contexts in which phrases such as "rest in peace" may be used is impossible to determine, and so the workload for reviewers could be overwhelming.

The answer to this issue may lie in the memorialisation process in which a relative or friend fills out an online form and produces proof of the member's death, whilst requesting that the page be converted into a tribute page.

However, due to the sensitive nature of the subject, and its potential for misuse, the feature is not well publicised. Such an option would seem to be the most effective solution to this growing problem.

Harvey McEwan writes to make insurance (especially car insurance!) a happier place.