Respectance Remembers Dead Loved Ones Online

When horror and death struck the Virginia Tech campus in April, friends of slain students turned to Facebook to set up memorial pages to honor the students' lives and share their memories and grief over losing them so violently and so young.

For a generation that has come of age on the social web, it was a natural way to reach out to each other and share feelings and memories. With that in mind, Respectance, a newly launched web site designed to honor people who have passed away, in some ways seems a natural next step in the evolution of social networking.

San Francisco-based Respectance was designed by Richard Derks (Kazaa) and Todd Wilkinson, and it has received venture funding from Solid Venture and Big Bang Ventures. It provides a dedicated, well-designed, and easy-to-use space on the web to build pages memorializing loved ones who have died through words, photos, and video clips.

"It gives people control over how they remember somebody," Derks said. You can set the pages to public or private to share only with family and friends.

The service is free, and will be supported mainly through premium services and not advertising. Funeral homes will be invited to use and pay for the service for clients, and Derks says in future months users will be able to turn photos and writings on the site into memory books, for a fee.

To someone in my age group, the premise seems a little jarring at first. But when you think of the web as a place to come together to share so much of our lives with friends and family, then it doesn't seem unnatural to create a special memorial online for loved ones who have passed away. Derks says he can see this being a way for younger family members to do something for their family during a time of mourning and to learn about family members' lives and family history while doing it. That's hard to argue with.

It's also a good way for far-flung family and friends who cannot make it to funerals to reach out and share with loved ones during a sad time. He calls it "emo-social media," the meshing of social networks with emotional experiences, and thinks that in two years it will be widely accepted way to remember family and friends who have died.

I'd love to know what you think: Is this a good way to remember loved ones, or does it feel a little too packaged and commercial? Check out Respectance, and add your take on this sensitive topic below.