I missed this over the summer:
"Nevada based YouDeparted provides an encrypted electronic safe deposit box with up to 5GB of space that can be accessed by loved ones in the event of a members death."
The funny thing is, I blogged about a form of this idea months before the service came out:
"...Sometimes, I think about what might happen to my digital presence when I'm gone. ...people's blogs and MySpace pages become comment section shrines, only because that's the only thing the public has access to.
In my case, at some point, my Typepad subscription and domain registration would expire, and my blog might disappear.
Now, lucky for me, I know a couple of folks over at 6A and so if news of my unfortunate demise reverberated throughout the blogosphere, I hope they might be nice enough to make my blog a freebie.
But then what of my email buddies, Twitter friends, and friends across various social networks? How would many of them even know I was gone? That's prob a big issue. Many of my digital friends, like all those dozens of prospective Match dates waiting in my inbox, wouldn't even know I was dead.
Enter Digital Plot. Digital Plot would enable you to carry out a very specific set of intructions to be carried out for your digital world when you pass.
Sure, its a little different, and more about the digerati, but still, the concept of leaving digital instructions for the Big Day is the same.
The main difference?
These guys went out and did it!
Execution is everything. The idea is nothing.
What I would do if I was them is to device an upsell mechanism for all of these digital places... domain registry, blog services, hosting companies, etc. Allow them to offer YouDeparted members a small payment on the side up front that allows them to insure their blog or page will live in perpetuity. Would I pay Typepad an extra $15 up front to ensure that my blog lives after I die? Sure. Does it cost them much to host a blog that no one posts to anymore... not really.... especially since the liklihood that my page gets any traffic years after I die is pretty slim.
The service is a good idea, but I think if you really want to get word of mouth going, you need to offer something to the geeks.