Respectance.com

It’s all about trial and error when you are doing something new. We had lots of members asking whether we had a newsletter, and if not then could we put one out.

We looked around at successful, non-spam newsletters. We ruled out the ones full of ads and nonsense. We decided the model that we liked was simple. It encapsulated the week’s happenings at the site, and left it up to you the user to follow up if you were interested. We sent out two.

We got several complaints. And we got some people thanking us for this service. I guess we fell flat. I am sorry if we offended anyone, and if we caused you to be upset then please accept our apologies. It isn’t what we intended to do.

Please let us know what information you would like to see in a newsletter. We will take your input into account and revamp. We are here, and we are still listening. Please leave your thoughts in the comments of this blog.

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We had a wonderful reaction to our blog post about traditional funeral homes from Tim at Final Embrace. I spent the weekend thinking about his input and realized how invaluable it is in generating discussion in this forum.

One of the strengths of the internet is that it allows new ideas and new perspectives to be shared so effectively. It’s so easy to collaborate with people and come up with even better ideas. Tim’s point of view is really invaluable - it helps to connect us to the funeral home industry. I hope that we are helping him connect to the world of online social networking in general, and specifically to online memorials.

Tim’s emphasis - that people want local service. We can’t agree more with that. This is exactly why we contacted hundreds of funeral homes and attended the NFDA Conference last fall. We hoped that funeral homes would use our site to create profile pages that their clients could visit to find information on deaths in their communities. We were disheartened that interest on the funeral home side wasn’t what we thought it could be.

Do you have any ideas how to make our service more ‘local’ or how to bring people on board to form partnerships that benefits the clients of both services? We are eager to hear what you have to say, and eager to learn more about what you are thinking.

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The questions continue about monetization of websites. One of my fellow blogger’s Tim at Final Embrace is questioning the entire wisdom of online memorial sites. New competition in the form of Tributes has cropped up. Launched by the creator of the failed site Eons, Tributes is targeting the Funeral home industry. As we have pointed out in the past. The funeral home industry though seems entrenched in the old ways of doing business.

Funeral Home Companies are deciding what people need, and how they will provide the services. They are intractable on this point. It’s all about the profit margin (and as a business person myself I understand profit), but without innovation this industry is being left behind.

There are memorial websites that charge $300-$500 to set up a tribute. Absolutely crazy. At Respectance people do it for free. They control their tributes and a simple Google search lets everyone find the tribute.

Tim points out that at heart we are still small town people. Now I will agree that we might feel like small town people, but most of us don’t live in a small town any more! Many don’t live where they grew up, some move several times as adults and establish friendships and acquaintances throughout the world. We don’t get the daily paper from each town we have friends in.

The premise that we like to peruse obits in the paper may be true, but we don’t get the papers anymore. In this big small world, we get our news instantaneously. Without emails from people I wouldn’t know whether someone had died half way around the world.
Remembering friends and loved ones with online memorials are the way the world is heading. The sooner the old guard in the Funerary Business tune in the farther ahead they will be.

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You’ve done your homework. You’ve made sure that the activity your child has joined is safe and well supervised. You trust the people your child sees at the weekly practice/meeting/activity. You approve of the friends your child has made. You see how much they enjoy their time and how they’ve blossomed. You know the next step is the ‘sleep away fieldtrip’.

It’s the activity that takes them away from you to a place with their group. It’s good for their independence. It isn’t easy for most parents to relinquish complete control of their children and to allow other people to be responsible. There are a lot of “what if” questions.

This past week the nightmare came to life for many parents. They sent their children off to Boy Scout Camp near Little Sioux, Iowa. Then the tornado struck. I can’t imagine the stress the families were under while they waited for the reports of their kid’s troop, their friends, and most importantly (but unsaid) their own children.

It’s times like these that we scoop up our own safe children and vow to never let them go. It isn’t rational, it isn’t realistic, it just is. Please leave your condolences to the victims of the tornado at our online memorial

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There seems to be a trend in Hollywood and beyond of embracing the glamorous past. Britney, Wino, and others seem to be reminiscing about the likes of Marilyn Monroe. Anna Nicole was said to idolize her. Reportedly, Britney visits Marilyn’s grave regularly and has chosen a plot in the same cemetery. It’s as if they are choosing Marilyn’s destiny. Anna Nicole did. Wino doesn’t seem far behind. They are on the path of self destruction. They are living other people’s memories rather than creating their own.

I see the same trend with everyday people too. They pick out their cemetery plots, their head stones. Some even plan their own funeral services. Surprisingly few put the time into preserving their memories though.

Try telling your life story on Picalily – who are you? Let your children, friends and family get to know all of you, not just the ‘dinner’ you, or the ‘football’ you, or the party animal. You’ll be surprised by all the things they have to add to your story.

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