Next-of-kin To-Do list: Funeral director, flowers, Facebook

Times Union blogger extraordinaire Kristi Gustafson has started an interesting discussion on her blog: What happens to your Facebook page when you die? Hop on over there to read and comment.

I believe most of the social networking sites leave these profile pages up indefinitely, but Facebook has taken the next step and requires that next-of-kin fill out a form to keep the page up as a memorial, but with no log-in access.

Creepy? I don't think so, especially when you think about the fact that the tiniest details of our lives have all been parsed into tidbits of data streamlined for electronic transmission.

It's just the next step in our evolution to homo sapiens sapiens digitalus.

Speaking of evolution: I realize sites like Facebook are incredibly prevelant in the lives of most people these days. If you put in perspective though, they're only a few years old and ultimately destined to be supplanted by "the next thing," whatever that is. So perhaps these social networking sites (and the personal profiles, photos, information, blogs, etc. they host) will eventually go the way of GeoCities, which was effectively deleted from the Web this week (except for what some digital archivists/historians were able to salvage). Click here to read more.