In return for a fee of $29 (€22.60), payable annually until you die, the thirtysomething computer experts will send posthumous messages from you to your friends, relatives and even enemies after you expire.
The idea is designed to cater for a text generation that never sends letters and communicates with friends and contacts exclusively via e-mail and mobile-phone messages.
Postexpression.com, with its banner “Death ends a life, not a relationship”, was launched at midnight on Friday and says it already has hundreds of messages filed by users that will be unlocked by a nominated keyholder after their deaths.
Users can create and store multimedia messages, which include sound and video files. They can be programmed to be delivered at specific dates, on special occasions, or to be published online, giving the dead person the chance to say things they felt they couldn’t while they were alive. The website says: “It gives you the opportunity to communicate final words of encouragement, confession and love; or private information that may get lost if you pass away.”
“The current generation mostly live their lives online, whether it’s sorting information or communicating or building relationships,” said Ian Dodson, 36, who set up the website with Mark Wrafter, 31.
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“Mark and myself were having a pint one night and Mark counted how many friends he had online and there were more than he had in the real world. So we thought, ‘what would happen if Mark got hit by a bus’? Nobody online would know.”
Once the messages have been created, the person nominates a keyholder who is allowed onto the website when they die to unlock their account, arranging for the messages to be sent on whatever dates are specified.
Dodson said: “We have had a lot of really positive comments like, ‘God, that gives me a stab at eternity’. People are saying it would help someone through a bereavement if they knew their loved one had created messages and they were going to get one every month for a year.”
Despite the echoes of Cecelia Ahern’s bestselling novel PS, I Love You — in which a dying man writes a series of letters to help his wife face her first year as a widow — it was not the inspiration for the website.
Users of the service are being advised to consider the effects their words from beyond the grave will have on recipients, who may be shocked to see their name in their inbox. “Compose your message carefully,” it warns. “When this message is read you will be dead. This will be the last opportunity you ever get to communicate.”