Tweeting from the grave

Forget religion or spirituality - do you believe in digital life after death? When you die, do you want your social media life to go on without you? It seems some people do because agencies have cropped up providing a service that tweets after you are dead.

One of these is Lives On, which takes care of "your social afterlife". The tagline says: "When your heart stops beating, you'll keep tweeting".

The app is still in its alpha testing phase, though one can sign up to be one of the first to try it. The idea is that the app knows your social media habits, syntax, likes and dislikes, and when you perish, your social media accounts will be updated.

Dave Bedwood, a creative partner at the London-based advertising agency responsible for Lives On, told the UK Guardian: "It offends some and delights others. Imagine if people started to see it as a legitimate but small way to live on. Cryogenics costs a fortune; this is free and I'd bet it will work better than a frozen head."

Another provider of an online afterlife is DeadSocial, a tool that allows users to save messages for their friends and family, sending well wishes from beyond the grave for occasions such as birthdays and anniversaries.

Services such as Legacy Locker execute wills for your digital property, so you can leave log-in details and instructions to someone you trust for your social media accounts in the event of your death.

But social media websites are also planning for your death.

Google recently launched an "Inactive Account Manager" service which contacts a user if their Gmail, YouTube, Picasa and/or blogger accounts have been inactive for between three and 18 months. If there is no response, Google will alert friends or family members who can access whatever personal data the user granted them access to before their death.

Family members can delete a deceased loved one's Facebook account if they can provide the company with a death certificate or similar document.

There is an app called "If I Die" that allows users to record a video to be released online after their death. Facebook will only release the video if trustees (selected by the deceased beforehand) confirm the user's death.

A Facebook spokesperson told technology and social media blog Mashable: "Our standard procedure when we receive a report that a user is deceased is to memorialise the account, which restricts profile and search privacy to friends only, but leaves the profile up so friends and family can leave posts in remembrance.

"We do honour requests from close family members to deactivate the account, which removes the profile and associated information from the site."

Mashable quotes Jed Brubaker, a PhD student who has been studying "post-mortem social networking" for years, as saying: "The online social networks we have are radically changing our relationship with death. It used to be your mom [who] told you someone died. Now, with Facebook that guy you knew in [pre-school] - you're connected to him, so when he dies you'll know. Your generation will have more encounters with death than ever before because we'll never have lost [contact with] anyone."