Where Does Your Facebook Content Go When You Die?

Every Monday morning at 7:10 am, I am a guest contributor on CHOM 97.7 FM radio broadcasting out of Montreal (home base). It's not a long segment - about 5 to 10 minutes every week - about everything that is happening in the world of technology and digital media. The good folks at CHOM 97.7 FM are posting these segments weekly to SoundCloud, if you're interested in hearing more of me blathering away. I'm really excited about this opportunity, because this is the radio station that I grew up on listening to, and it really is a fun treat to be invited to the Mornings Rock with Terry and Heather B. morning show. The segment is called, CTRL ALT Delete with Mitch Joel.

This week we discussed:

What's with this no "Family Day" in Quebec? Not fair! Still, please don't move away from Montreal because of it :)
David Carr passed away last week. You may not know him, but you should. Carr had a killer column in The New York Times called, The Media Equation. There are just a few writers who get me going like David Carr did. He was one of the best. He was 58. He collapsed in The New York Times' newsroom. He, literally, died doing what he loved best. Still, I found myself trolling his Facebook and Twitter newsfeeds, and seeing things he had posted only a few short minutes before he died. It was eerie... and it reminded me of this  idea of a digital will... still, those tweets and posts are the last we see from him. I will miss him and his words. 
On that subject, where does your Facebook page go when you die? Too morbid for a Monday morning? Still, think about it: if something does happen to you, what happens to all of that content, and can you create some kind of "digital will"? Not everyone is going to entrust someone with their passwords, but Facebook recently added in a function called, Legacy Contact, that allows this virtual next of kin to change the deceased user's profile picture, pin a memorial letter to the top of the profile, and respond to friend requests. The legacy contact can also download an archive of photos and posts. The functionality is currently only available in the US, so you may want to consider some kind of digital will, if you live in somewhere else in the world. 
Everyone's favorite online social network of the day, Pinterest, is now looking to flex its muscles and figure out how to make some serious cash. This is coming in the form of a "buy" button (which makes perfect sense). The picture-based digital scrapbooking site will make a killing if this is done well. Why not be able to both "pin" and "buy" without ever having to leave the site? Rumours abound that this buy button could happen any time in the next 3 months. Get those PayPal accounts in order! 
App of the week: Boomerang for Gmail.

Listen here...

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