A New Niche Social Network… for the Deceased

In Hong Kong there is barely enough space to add to the skyscraper skyline, let alone find room for burial grounds and memorials. Some perspective on just how crowded Hong Kong is: its Mongkok shopping district is the most densely populated place on earth, with the Guinness Book of World Record estimating 338,189 people per square mile (New York City’s population density is 26,403 per square mile). In a country this crowded, the government has opted for an innovative way to allow its citizens to mourn their loved ones – on a social network.

The social network is a new initiative established by Hong Kong’s Food and Environmental Hygiene Department. It is designed to provide an online space for families to mourn their lost loved ones in a city that has a waiting list of up to several years for a single square foot of physical memorial space.

Families can visit the site and enter a few details about the deceased. The website searches city records to ensure that the individual has indeed passed away, and then allows the family to set up a memorial page publicly or privately. The site encourages families to share this page on social networks like Twitter and Facebook, and allows an interactive memorial experience featuring emoticons like flowers and paper money that can be left at the virtual memorial.

As we have been discussing lately, niche social networks could potentially siphon users away from established networks like Facebook. However, this memorial website appears to be more of a compliment to other networks, designed as a respectful way to remember the deceased online using other social networks to include friends and relatives in the mourning process.

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.