A screenshot of the website for I-tomb.net, which is offering "virtual tombs" in a cyber-cemetery. (iPostmortem)
PALO ALTO, Calif. – People who spend their life on the Internet can now spend all of eternity there -- if they fork over $50 a year.
An entrepreneur is offering virtual tombs in a cyber-cemetery, and has already raised $2 million from investors for the macabre startup, the New York Post reported Monday. Jacques Mechelany, who heads I-Postmortem, is hoping that people will soon be dying to sign up.
He’s running two sites, one called i-Tomb.net. For the $50 fee, a user can set up his own tomb, or that of a loved one. With a click of a mouse, those who are left behind can visit the tomb, add digital flowers or candles, personal messages and streaming videos or photos memorializing the deceased.
A related site -- i-Memorial.com -- costs $120 a year and delivers messages created earlier by those who have just moved to the Great Beyond to designated friends and relatives.
Subscribers can also use it to store wills and instructions about their funerals.
Some 54 million people are expected to die around the world this year -- and Mechelany, of Palo Alto, Calif., hopes to make a fortune from the growing business of virtual cemeteries.
“We have an ability to leave traces of our lives not only for our children, but for our grandchildren’s grandchildren,” he said.
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