When 18-year-old Amanda Bassler caught herself thinking of her friend Joshua Reif the other day, she posted a comment on his MySpace page: "Missin you buddy!!! LOVE YOU SOO MUCH!!"
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MySpace.com, the world's largest social networking Web site, boasts more than 70 million users, and like Reif, not all of them are still alive.

Reif was killed in December when a car fell from the rear of a tow truck and landed on top of him while he was working as a youth apprentice through Waukesha West High School. He was 17.

Since his death, Reif's friends have posted hundreds of poems, thoughts and other touching notes - many directed to him as if he were still alive - on MySpace, turning his page into a virtual memorial.

"It does help to write comments on his MySpace because it just makes you feel like he is still here and is reading them. Losing Josh was the hardest thing I've ever had to go through," Bassler said in an e-mail to the Journal Sentinel. "I think of it as a remembrance of him and kind of like a memorial for people all over the world to see."

It's only natural that as the Internet becomes a bigger part of people's everyday lives and, in the case of some young people, the hub of their social network, it will also become the place they go to grieve, said Amanda Lenhart, a researcher at the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

"In many cases there are communities that have sprung up around these networks of people," Lenhart said. "MySpace has become a digital space where people can be memorialized, a place where people can revisit them long after their death."

In some cases the anonymity of the Internet allows people to pay their last respects with a privacy not afforded at a traditional funeral, Lenhart said.

"The other day I was looking at the MySpace of a young person who had died, and a poster said 'I didn't have the courage to say anything at your funeral but I just wanted you to know you'll be missed,' " Lenhart said.

Cheryl Kaiser, 21, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee student who suffered a seizure and drowned after falling into her bathtub Feb. 18, has had a handful of friends leave her comments lamenting her death.

Michael Kauth, 25, who met Kaiser through friends, posted a message a week after she died that read: "You will be missed. I'm glad I met you, thank you for the laughs and fun times. I'll see you later."

"I left a post on her MySpace page because it was a way to say goodbye. Since MySpace was the way I communicated with her most, it seemed fitting to leave a comment for her," Kauth said.

Kauth said he wasn't sure at first if posting his thoughts for the world to see was the right thing to do.

"I was worried it would seem tacky, but once I saw a few others do it, I felt it was a nice gesture, sort of a way to let her and those that were close to her know she'll be missed," Kauth said.

Spinoff Web site
The practice of MySpace memorializing has even spawned a Web site focused on aggregating MySpace pages of the deceased.

The Web site, www.MyDeathSpace.com, features links to roughly 120 deceased MySpace users' personal Web pages, including Reif's and Kaiser's, along with information about how they died.

"An obituary might be four or five lines of text with no pictures, but with MySpace everything the dead person was into or was interested in is right there," said Mike Patterson, the site's 25-year-old Webmaster who lives in San Francisco.

Patterson started MyDeathSpace.com in December, a few months after reading about a Fresno man who killed his family because of mounting debt.

"I looked up the names of his daughters on MySpace, and there they were. During down times at work when I would read online news, I kept coming across different articles with young victims, and more often than not they had MySpace profiles," Patterson said.

The Web site has stirred controversy for what some perceive as a morbid flippancy it displays with the dead.

A feature on the site allows its 6,000 to 15,000 visitors a day to leave comments, many of them disrespectful if not crude and downright offensive, at individuals' pages at MyDeathSpace.com. In one of the latest pages posted, some of the commentators, known only by screen names, crack jokes about a Dallas teenager's suicide.

Patterson insists that the comment function is just one aspect of the site and that people who are offended by it should look elsewhere.

"The feedback I receive is mixed. Sometimes a person will thank me for creating the site, and other times I'll receive an e-mail filled with profanity," Patterson said.

Not surprisingly, the comments visitors leave under individuals' stories on MyDeathSpace.com also reflect a fairly even split between people who say they're disgusted by the whole idea and those who come to share memories of the featured person.

Patterson said in running the site he has been moved by seeing the number of people who continue to visit the pages long after a person's death.

"With MySpace, the profile of the deceased user is still very much alive and will remain indefinitely. Leaving comments for a fallen friend is very much like leaving flowers near a headstone," Patterson said.

Birthdays and anniversaries
It's not just the edgy young digerati who have adopted new technology to mark friends' passing.

Legacy.com powers the online obituaries of 275 newspapers nationwide, including the Journal Sentinel.

The company created an online version of a traditional funeral guest book but has been surprised by the varying ways people use it, said Hayes Ferguson, chief operating officer at the Evanston, Ill.-based company.

"One of the first things that struck us is that people are using it to write directly to the deceased and those people tend to come back again and again on birthdays and anniversaries," Ferguson said, adding that 70% of the online guest books are signed.

Though you'd never expect someone to show up at a complete stranger's funeral, people who've never met the subject of the obituary will sign their guest book if that person's story resonates with them, Ferguson said.

Judith Miller, Marquette University's associate dean for graduate programs and research in college of nursing, has done extensive research on the effects of coping with long-term illness and grieving.

She said she's not sold on the use of the Internet as an effective outlet in the grieving process.

"I don't know how wonderful such an open space might be," Miller said. "To me this is a really private interaction between the loved one and the one that is deceased. . . . But I mean the Internet? The Internet is the world."

Still, Michael Kauth says MySpace gave him an outlet to express his regret for Cheryl Kaiser's death that he might not have had otherwise.

"It felt good to be able to leave her one last message. A way to say goodbye. Is it a good way? I don't know, but it's a way. And sometimes that's all a person needs."

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company