When her 21-year-old daughter died in a sledding accident in early 2007, Pam Weiss had never logged onto Facebook. Back then, it was used almost exclusively by the young, like her daughter Amy, a student at UCLA. But Weiss knew her daughter had an account, so in her grief she turned to the social-networking site to look for photos. She found what she was looking for, and more — she was soon communicating with her daughter’s many friends, sharing memories and even piecing together a blueprint of things Amy had hoped to do in the future through posts she’d written. “It makes me feel good that Amy had a positive effect on so many people, and I wouldn’t have had a clue if it hadn’t been for Facebook,” says Weiss.

Like a growing number of people mourning loved ones, Weiss had tapped into one of the most powerful troves of memories going: their online presence. Though Facebook shut Amy’s account after three months (Weiss had copied much of it), the site later decided to keep deceased users’ profiles up. “We first realized we needed a protocol for deceased users after the Virginia Tech shooting, when students were looking for ways to remember and honor their classmates,” says Facebook spokesperson Elizabeth Linder. The site responded by creating a “memorial state” for profiles of deceased users, in which certain information, such as status updates and group affiliation, is removed. (See the best social-networking applications.)

Read More

MySpace employees experienced some unusual high and lows this week at work. On Monday, workers for the social networking site learned of a data breach orchestrated by a fellow employee, who collected names, Social Security numbers and compensation information of many of his co-workers. Fox Entertainment Group (the company that operates MySpace) sent e-mails to all employees alerting them to the incident, and assured them that no bank account or medical information was compromised.

Read More