DeadSoci.al is a bizarre new service from UK-based Really Simply Startups that allows you to schedule social media posts to be disseminated over time after your death.
The service allows you to create an account that you can link to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Within your DeadSoci.al account you can friend other users and share status updates, making it similar on a very basic level to other social networking sites. You’re also able to enter some personal details in your profile, including pictures and videos. For now, DeadSoci.al requires you to give their username and password to someone you trust to activate your account after you’ve passed away.
Founder James Norris debuted DeadSoci.al at the Startup Village at this year’s SXSW. Norris said he came up with the idea when English talk show host Bob Monkhouse released a PSA commercial on the dangers of prostate cancer four years after he died from the disease. The project began as a Twitter hack called Grave Tweeter, and with the launch of DeadSoci.al Norris hopes to make it into a much more robust and reliable service.
Norris believes the service can be used as a way to say goodbye to friends and loved ones, to communicate with a younger unborn generation, and even to remind those still living of how the world once was.
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The startup is currently building a dead man’s switch for the service, which means you can set your account watch for a certain amount of time you’ve been inactive on a social networking site. After whatever amount of specified time has passed, DeadSoci.al sends an email asking if the you are still alive. A week after two messages have been sent without a reply, the dead man’s switch activates and begins sending your pre-written messages from the afterlife.
To combat the inevitable shifting in social platforms, the service additionally publishes the information on your page on the DeadSoci.al website. Norris hopes to adapt the service to future social networking websites as its popularity increases.
I’ve got an account set up specifically to publish an extensive and extremely outdated back-catalogue of Tech.li stories once I’m dead. Look for it, hopefully, in about 70 years.
