Facebook Legacy

Facebook is a place to share and connect with friends and family. For many of us, it’s also a place to remember and honor those we’ve lost. When a person passes away, their account can become a memorial of their life, friendships and experiences. What started off as a Hackathon project in early 2014 became a labor love. A year later, Legacy initially launched with a simple feature - the power to choose a legacy contact, a family member or friend who can manage your Facebook account when you pass away.

A redesigned memorialized profile pays tribute to the deceased by adding “Remembering” above their name and making it possible for their legacy contact to pin a post to the top of their Timeline.

Once someone lets Facebook know that a person has passed away, Facebook will memorialize your account and the legacy contact will be able to:

1. Write a post to display at the top of the memorialized Timeline (for example, to announce a memorial service or share a special message)
2. Respond to new friend requests from family members and friends who were not yet connected on Facebook
3. Update the profile picture and cover photo

If someone chooses, they may give their legacy contact permission to download an archive of the photos, posts and profile information they shared on Facebook. The legacy contact will not be able to log in as the person who passed away or see that person's private messages. Alternatively you also have the power to let Facebook know if you’ld prefer to have your account permanently deleted after death.

Until now, when someone passed away, Facebook offered a basic memorialized account which was viewable, but could not be managed by anyone. By talking to people who have experienced loss, we realized there is more we can do to support those who are grieving and those who want a say in what happens to their account after death.

In time, Facebook’s mission to connect the world transcends not only in our lifetime, but that of our children and our children’s children.

• credits

• Arvi Raquel-Santos// Design Lead, UI & UX Design
• Mike Finch & Valerie Chao // UI & UX Design
• Vanessa Callison Burch // Product Manager
• Mark Govea // Software Engineer
• Jasmine Probst // Content Strategist
• Work completed at Facebook