There's a new online social media site called Respectance where you can create your own tributes and share your memories of the dead. I first learned of it from this article by Will Reisman of The Examiner.

There are at least 500 tasteless jokes to be made about this idea. I won't be making any of them. That's because the more I thought about it, and about this whacky world we live in, the more I decided this is probably going to be quite successful. These days people leave flowers and memorials along super highways. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people will gather in Paris and London today to mark the 10th anniversary of Princess Diana's death. The father of the man killed in that same accident will observe two minutes of silence at his famous department store.

This new site was co-founded by Richard Derks. And here's the positioning of it as provided in Mr. Reisman's piece:

The combination of an available emotional outlet with social networking features has led Derks and company to dub Respectance a form of emo-social media.

Whether or not Respectance will achieve escape velocity, it is nevertheless a very clean and appealing site with Google-like simplicity and none of the gladiola, funeral home, crucifix, and gravestone graphical schmoltz and related design weepiness and clutter you might expect to find in the emotional social world.

But I have a question. Can someone go there and lay down a tribute to a person they wish were dead?

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