The booming afterlife via online obituary

NEW YORK: On the weekend of Muhammad Ali's death last month, the worldwide leader in obituaries published 600 words about the legendary boxer.

The perfunctory notice on Legacy.com had little of the craft devoted to the 4,500-word remembrance in the New York Times or the more compact appreciation in the Economist. But the website received mourners on nearly a million obituaries.


(Image: AFP)

Among the departed was Cynthia Johnston Anderson, 75, a guidance counsellor at Statesboro High School in Georgia and president of the Civic Garden Club.

It's a never-ending wave of grief and fond remembrance that underscores the transformation of how we learn about the dead.

It includes video, audio, digital guest books, and other interactive features. They aren't new--the Times's tribute to the victims of 911, “Portraits of Grief" (hosted by Legacy.com), is 15 years old. But with 62% of US adults now getting news from Facebook and other such sites, according to a 2016 Pew Research Center Study, obituaries are being experienced online as never before, including on thousands of funeral home websites.

“The big change is social media," said Steve Parrott, chief ex ecutive officer of Legacy.com.

Parrott puts Legacy's annual revenue at $20 million to $100 million. Its real power lies in its reach: over 20 million unique US visitors a month, according to Comscore. More than half of the 200,000 people who die each month in the US end up on Legacy, Parrott estimates, often while running as death notices in newspapers or on funeral home sites.

Americans spend about $500 million annually on newspaper obituaries, said Mike Heene, general manager of Adpay, which places them in newspapers around the country.

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