You would have heard many times before that with every update you leave on twitter, somebody is watching. Every time you post a message on Facebook, somebody is watching. Of course you hope your friends and followers are watching but somebody else is also looking over your online profiles. No doubt you don’t give it much thought but every time you make use of any social media networking site, you are leaving a digital trail that, if followed, can build another you. A digital you that will behave like you, like what you like, dislike what you dislike and travel to the same places you travel to. This copy of you would be able to talk with your friends and duplicate your moods and opinions. This new you, for all intents and purposes, could live on after you die. Thanks to the trail of personal information you are leaving online, you are now able to digitally live on forever.

Recent figures released in the United States by Entrustet, a digital asset planning organisation, have stated that 480,000 Facebook users in the US will die in 2011. The worldwide figure is over 1.78 million, or to be more precise, about one person every three minutes. These are the figures that are known, what is not known is how many Facebook or Twitter users are actually already dead but their digital selves are living on. The figures reveal that 150% of people aged 16 to 25 have a Facebook account in the USA. So how is this possible – sure this means there are more accounts than there are people? This is exactly the case as some people will have more than one account, for example teenagers who are required to keep their Facebook use transparent will often have a second account their parents don’t know about. In other cases people will create an account with a fake name to prey on other vulnerable users, while many of those accounts will also belong to people who have died, but live on online.

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So there I was watching the TV late last night when up popped the news that Michael Jackson was dead! Could this be right or was it another celebrity hoax, sadly no, Michael Jackson had indeed died.

Those that follow my Twitter will have noticed that I was tweeting updates as they came in and my last tweet was this picture and “LA coroner confirms “king of pop” Michael Jackson dead at the age of 50 from cardiac arrest.”

It all seemed to break into a frenzy when entertainment website TMZ announced on its website “Michael Jackson has been rushed to hospital” and then shortly after another announcement that would shock the world and also send the Twitter community into an online barrage of Michael Jackson tweets, “Michael Jackson has Died“.

I have never been a fan of Michael Jackson, but he was a talented artist and through all his problems and controversy, he is known by everyone and will be sadly missed by his mass of fans and those in the music industry that have admired his music.

R.I.P. Michael Jackson. August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009