News: MySpace Users Mourn At MyDeathSpace

News/Web Culture/Social Networks/Myspace/Laurie Sullivan
Found on: informationweek.com

It all began after Mike Patterson read the news about a father who brutally murdered his family and then committed suicide due to mounting debt.

Putting down the paper, he searched on the social networking site MySpace.com to find the daughter's name, and, after seeing several more profiles of kids who were deceased, wondered how many other users of the site had died.

Patterson's findings inspired the 25-year-old from San Francisco to begin building a site to educate youth, he said in an e-mail. MyDeathSpace began as a message board in August/September 2005, with the purpose of tracking all MySpace.com members who had passed away. MyDeathSpace.com, launched in January 2006, links to news storied culled from the Web and victims' MySpace pages. The site gives mourners a place to connect online.