Online shrines for "death networking"

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) - With online sperm and egg trade and social networking sites like Bebo, Facebook and MySpace, we already create and date on the Internet -- so why not "cremate" online too?

Maggie Candy, a nurse trained in care of the elderly, thought she knew how to cope with death. But when her daughter Stella committed suicide at age 17 she found the adult world of condolence books, sympathy cards and graveyard headstones out-dated and lacking in what it could offer in Stella's memory.

In the end she turned to her computer-savvy teenage son, the Internet, and a new world of online memorials and so-called "death networking" to create a fitting tribute.

"For most younger people now, the Internet is something they use every day and online memorials are a natural evolution," she told Reuters.

Candy's virtual memorial to her daughter was one of the starting blocks for what some call the latest "e-trend" in Britain.

Candy now runs a Web site, www.alwaysberemembered.co.uk, on which she offers the bereaved a way of paying tribute to their dead. Users create a memorial page with pictures, poems and tributes which can be visited, viewed and added to by anyone who feels a need.

TEENAGE STABBINGS

Online shrines have been popular in the United States for some years, but in Britain they have only recently begun to grow in popularity -- in part because of a spate of fatal stabbings and shootings among teenagers.