tributes.com wants to do for obits, what monster.com did for job search

monster.com founder Jeff Taylor created
tributes.com for you to leave lasting tributes of
your departed loved ones online.

Jeff Taylor is doing for death what he did for help wanteds. 

The visionary founder of monster.com has launched tributes.com, a place to read about and tell the story of, your dearly departed in multi-media.

It’s kind of like myspace for dead people. And it's revolutionizing an industry.

Remember the time you and the family took late grandma Rose to the alligator farm? Write about it here. Have video of it? Post it. Tell your friends and family and they can leave their own tributes and fond memories too.

Tributes has 84 million searchable public records in its database so you can search for your loved ones, or see if anyone you know has passed on recently. You can leave tributes at celeb pages too.

"I got to thinking about it in 2002," says Taylor, himself a youthful 48. "Every time I looked at the help wanteds in the newspapers, the obituaries came next."

Obits are one of the last places the newspapers are holding their own or growing. Which means they are sitting ducks for a webpreneur like Taylor.

“It’s the perfect storm," he says. "The average age of the obit reader is over 55, which is also now the fastest growing group of internet users.”

Also, in the newspaper you’re limited by column inches and space. Not so on a tributes page. "You can get detailed again," says Taylor. Write the story of your loved ones life as long as you like. Go multimedia. The newspapers can’t touch this.

When I visited the site I thought, ‘wow, this is surprisingly uplifting.’ What a great way to honor someone’s life and a great place for kids to know their family history. Even though most obit readers are over 55, young people die too, so you could leave a tribute to anyone at any age.

We do not have a healthy culture of dying. Too often we believe it's a race to the black and drop 'em in the ground. Living well, means dying well and being remembered well.

And if people put tattoos of their departed friends and family on their bodies, why not give them a place on the internet?

Taylor remembered a high school project that asked students to create their own obits. He doesn't remember what he wrote but he says it got him to thinking, "we're only here a short time, what are you going to do with it?"

More recently, the obits have been a personal experience for Taylor too. “In my age category you start letting go of people, it’s a strange feeling. So I got to thinking about it in that way too.”

If this grows monster-sized, Jeff Taylor may well write the online tribute for the obituary section of the newspapers himself.