Ever receive a Facebook message or a tweet from a deceased family member promoting some diet and weight loss program? So have we at Digital Mountain. Which made us think about how both the living and their heirs need to worry about social re-engineering. Just as we have wills, trusts and healthcare directives, we should have digital account directives.
With Facebook’s approximately 1.2 billion — and rapidly growing — users, the social networking graveyard problem has just reached its infancy. According to the CIA World Factbook, as of July2013, there were approximately 7,095,217,980 people on the planet and the death rate was approximately 7.9 deaths per 1,000 people a year (equating to roughly 56,052,222 deaths each year). Using these metrics, about 7.9% of Facebook’s users may become part of the digital graveyard within 10 years. Without replenishing users, within 60 years, there may be more profiles of the deceased than the living. This means Facebook potentially has over a million accounts to de-activate or delete every year.
Perhaps we have a new field coming our way for those in the IT and legal industries?
It’s important to question the methodology and not just seek the lowest price per GB unit, so you end up minimizing total costs and maximizing value for your organization.
Please contact us at 866.DIG.DOCS or info@digitalmountain.com to work with our experts.
