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Respectance.com, putting the ‘emo’ in social media

Written on 5th December 2007 12 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Respectance.com is a social tribute network that offers people the opportunity to honor the lives of their deceased loved ones. Its founders, Todd Wilkinson and Richard Derks, are calling themselves emo-social pioneers. After a fancy diner at Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten’s house in downtown Amsterdam, I had the chance to ask Richard Derks some questions about this new term.

“Emo stands for emotion. We believe that social networks need more emotion in order to gain relevance. In our network that is remembering your loved ones”, Derks explains. He and Wilkinson came up with the idea after the death of Wilkinsons’ mother. Friends and family told him stories he had never heard before, making him realize that he didn’t know his mother that well. Inspired by this event, Derks and Wilkinson started thinking of a way to share memories with others. The result was Respectance.

Derks: “We’ve aimed at the American market, since we consider Americans most ready for emo-social media”. His most important task is to make American people feel comfortable with the new tradition of starting a tribute for the deceased. “I ask them: why would it end by putting the deceased under the ground? If you’ve really loved someone, you’ll never stop thinking about this person.” So far, America seems to agree, considering the success of Respectance.

To Derks’ surprise, not only Americans are setting up tributes. “Even though we have no marketing activity going on outside the US, 55 percent of the visitors are foreign. Especially in Latin America and Scandinavia, Respectance is really popular. This reveals some pretty interesting cultural differences. For instance, a Norwegian web site for parents who lost their child, advised its visitors to visit Respectance. My American employees were shocked by the pictures of babies, and asked me to remove them. Naturally, I didn’t do that, since our slogan is ’share your memories’. Everybody is allowed to do so”.

Regarding the success of Respectance, Americans are ready for the ‘emo’ in social media. It is questionable though, whether people from cultures where they tend to be more cautious in what they publicly disclose, will also embrace Respectance.com. Derks certainly hopes they will, saying: “Everybody deserves to be remembered”.

TV4B did an interview with Richard Derks during The Next Web Conference 2007. Check it out.

12 Comments »

About the author: Ernst-Jan is blogger and co-organizer of BLOG08, who previously worked in New York to cover news at the United Nations. Next to writing, he's also a singer in the band Christina Five. Follow him on Twitter or read his personal blog Dutchproblogger.com .

12 comments/trackbacks to “Respectance.com, putting the ‘emo’ in social media”

Oct 3, 2008: Social network for the death Respectance crosses the ocean
[...] is going to highlight some interesting cultural differences. Derks already told me about one when I interviewed him in November 2007: “Even though we have no marketing activity going on outside the US, 55 percent of the visitors [...]

By Patrick on Dec 5, 2007

Interesting space…
At SIME conference there was a presentation of Alex de Jong (founder of http://cellspace.nl) about how the internet could make us immortal. What happens to my online personality after I’ve passed away?
The Internet is still very young and this space will become huge but I’m really curious if these initiatives aren’t ahead of its time. It could be very well possible that this will be accepted and embraced 5 years from now, but they might have run out of cash by then…

So it would be great to know more about respectance business model, are they generating cash at the moment? Do they expect to see an uptake in their traffic?

I’m pretty sure that when I’m gone, I’d love to have an online place where people can share memories. So if you see it from a personal point of view, I can see that there is a business.

How about others? would you like to have an online place for your memories?

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By richard on Dec 5, 2007

Emosocial media is indeed new. So far most of what we have seen happening online is made by men. Once the women will start creating online places, it will definitely change a lot. We need an online Oprah to get a more balanced online offering.

How can you protect your online identity? Our slogan says it all: share your memories. You are what others remember of you. As long as they remember you, you will be alive in a certain way. I think that we are all building up memories online. Eventually, we are all being immortalized by being interactive online.

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By Patrick on Dec 5, 2007

@Richard Seems that emoscocial media has the same problem as web2.0, a lot of enthusiastic men, but to few women.

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By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Dec 5, 2007

So what is holding women back? Can we get a few in here to participate?

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By Heino on Dec 5, 2007

It is questionable though, whether people from cultures where they tend to be more cautious in what they publicly disclose, will also embrace Respectance.com. Derks certainly hopes they will, saying: “Everybody deserves to be remembered”.

LOL, as if you can only be remembered by using respectance. I don’t know how succesful Respectance is but it’ striking there is almost no reactions to the blog posts. Alexa sure doesn’t paint a too favourable picture

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By Ernst-Jan Pfauth on Dec 6, 2007

@Heino, probably because Respectance not so popular in the web2.0 scene, but more in the ‘real world’, if you know what I mean.

Sometimes social networks attract more women btw, look at the stats of Facebook for example: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....her-stats/

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By Heino on Dec 6, 2007

but more in the ‘real world’? I guess I don’t know what you mean. The alexa stats don’t differentiate between web2.0 scene and real life. they are just low.

I think respectance is a wonderfully designed website that just cannot capture the core of grieving. It happpens in the hearts and minds, not on a website. Just my 2 cents. But we will see.

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By Martha on Dec 8, 2007

What’s holding women back – an excellent question really. From the experience that I have with my female friends (generally the 30-45 year old demo, of university educated women) I’ll tell you that we do use the internet. Many though, simply have too many demands on their time. Between work and child raising, home, and spouse, there remains a finite amount of disposable time.

The question then becomes, how to spend the time – virtually socializing, or doing it face to face. It would appear that most prefer to use the internet (email, shopping, research( as a tool. A means to an end. A way to make the date – not to be the date.

It certainly is a topic worth further discussion, and formal analysis.

Thanks for bringing it up.

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By Patrick de Laive on Dec 8, 2007

@Martha I’d love to know more about that. I’m preparing an article on Women on the Web.
I think that we ‘the guys’ do not have a clue what women are doing on the web, what they like, which pages they visit, what they value etc.

There is not only a huge market for web apps for women, but also I believe that existing apps (now mainly used by men) would boost when used by more women. So win win… I would say.

How can we get more women involved?

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By Martha on Dec 8, 2007

@Patrick,
I can’t agree more with the importance of this kind of marketing information. It’s rather a chicken and egg thing. Build the app and get the chicks to come? Get the chicks to build the app? I would be keenly interested in helping you with your research into this topic.
M

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By Paul on May 25, 2009

Could it be that over half of all respectance visitors being outside of the United States is an indication that it is in fact not succeeding in the US? If they are targeting America and most of the visitors are in Europe, then their market penetration in their target market is probably very small.

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