Venyu Blog

We’re all familiar with the concept of life insurance to make sure your family is monetarily taken care of in the event the Grim Reaper finally doubles down on your number. But what happens to your digital identity once you pass on (e.g. Facebook, Flickr, personal blogs)?

If you’re not able to update it (understandably), will your blog live on and who will control it? And what about Facebook? Can it be structured to announce you’re passing or to erase your wall once you’re gone? The most recent entry into the so-called digital life insurance arena is MyWebWill, a Sweden-based web service that launches in Spring 2010. According to its co-founder, Lisa Granberg, the theory behind the service is that just as in your offline life you want to be sure certain things are kept hidden, you’ll want to be able to take control of your online identity (or at least have your heirs do it for you).

The service, triggered upon receipt of an email from one of two persons you designate informs MyWebWill of your passing and provides evidence of such (e.g. death certificate), deactivates and erases your online accounts for the modest fee of $17 a year and a one-time charge of $179. MyWebWill account holders also have the opportunity to create an email that bids their followers on Twitter or fans on Facebook their fond goodbyes launchable on a pre-selected day, week, month or longer after the service is activated.

Given that more and more of us have a digital presence combined with the fact nothing on the Internet actually goes away once it’s posted, I suppose this service can be considered forward-looking and someone, somewhere inevitably would have come up with it. On a purely intellectual plane, however, isn’t this service redundant? After all, regardless of how you finally signed off and shed your mortal coil, your digital life and everything it has recorded will remain active into perpetuity. As those of us who spend our days manipulating it already know, data (like matter itself) is never entirely destroyed and digital memories really do have an afterlife.

Here’s a My WebWill video demo: