The death of a user does not result in the elimination of his or her account nor the profile’s place inside a network of digital peers. Friends use profiles postmortem to say last goodbyes, share memories, and coordinate funereal arrangements. These practices highlight three important themes for social networks and the representation of identity for their users: embodiment, representation, and temporality.

Congratulations to Jed Brubaker and Janet Vertesi on the acceptance of their paper on death and social networking sites to the CHI 2010 workshop HCI at the End of Life. Death and the Social Network Jed R. Brubaker & Janet Vertesi We analyze profiles and associated comments on social network sites following the death of [...]