Online memorial adds second site for pets
Toronto Web firm expands mandate beyond human deceased
October 23, 2003
by Shane Schick
IT Business
A Canadian dot-com firm has expanded its business beyond
online memorials for friends and family members to create a site exclusively
for honouring the lives of pets.
Toronto-based
PartingWishes.com Thursday said it had launched
ILovedMyPet.com, through which
users can step through a question and answer wizard, and customize the look
and uploading text and images for a 100K home page dedicated to a former
pet. These tributes can be set up and run free of charge for 12 weeks. Pages
with more images that are to be hosted more permanently will require a small
fee to cover maintenance costs, the company said, the proceeds from which
will go to humane societies in Canada and the United States.
PartingWishes.com launched in late 2000 to provide a
similar service for deceased people, but has since broadened its mandate to
host online wills and estate planning.
"We actually found that a good portion -- probably more
than half of the memorials --were created for pets," said PartingWishes.com
CEO Tim Hewson. "I think that creating an online memorial for a person --
this is my own personal theory -- sometimes you have to get approval from a
number of people, whereas for a pet it's a very personal thing."
A number of these memorials have since been moved to the
new pets-only site. Hewson said the site isn't intended to make money,
adding it wouldn't be tasteful to demand high fees. "Obviously, it's hard
for us to give away service space and time," he said. "We do look for some
fees if people want to expand that, where you can put video clips up and
things like that."
While dot-com companies that provided a range of other
services have since crashed and burned, the last few years have seen a
proliferation of online memorial portals, including Legacy.com, Memorium.org
and Generations.on.ca.
Ron Mills, president of Generations.on.ca, said his site
doesn't offer pet tributes because its memorials are designed to help
families research and track their geneology. Though he won't be a
competitor, Mills said the timing for something like PartingWishes.com's
subsidiary may be opportune.
"I read an article about two years ago that said the pet
business was going to be the business to get into in the next few years," he
said.
Hewson said PartingWishes will continue to build its
primary business through online wills, which he hopes will get a boost if
legislation surrounding digital signatures eventually allows users to sign
wills over the Internet. In the meantime, ILovedMyPet.com will be promoted
through cross-linking with other sites and through search engines.
"At this point it's too early to say we would have enough
revenue to spend money on advertising," he said. "It's a very delicate
subject . . . We almost want it to be a self-discovery when they're trying
to find a suitable tribute."
(From ITBusiness.ca E-Business News, Thursday, October 23, 2003)
You can create an online memorial to your departed pet for free at at
www.ILovedMyPet.com.
For More Information Contact:
ILovedMyPet.com
Email: support@ilovedmypet.com
Internet: http://www.ilovedmypet.com/