Fourteen years ago, Jeff Taylor helped set off a tectonic shift in recruitment advertising by founding Monster.com, one of the first online companies to challenge a big profit source of newspapers.
Now, just as papers are reeling from a massive drainage of ad dollars online, Taylor thinks he's found another one of their strongholds that's ripe for online competition: obituaries.
Funerals have historically been local affairs, which meshed well with newspapers' strong ties to their communities. But Taylor believes that may be changing as more people live far from the places they were born and grew up. Taylor hopes his new site, Tributes.com, will fill that broader need.
Unlike when Monster debuted in 1994, Taylor faces a lot more competition. Newspapers are already big players online in the obituaries business, thanks largely to a 10-year-old company called Legacy.com, which runs the obituary sections of Web sites for more than 650 newspapers, for which it earns a fee. The site, which is 45 percent owned by publisher Tribune Co., gets 12 million visitors per month.
Legacy, like competitors such as Memory-Of.com, offers a variety of ways for bereaved family members and friends to remember loved ones including virtual guest books, which can be archived online for a fee.
Taylor says his new venture can do that and more, but without relying on newspapers for information about funerals and deaths. Instead, Tributes.com will glean that information through alliances with funeral homes and groups directly as well as trade associations and public information about deaths from Social Security, though he declined to divulge specific deals.
Sophisticated search and database technology will allow users of Tributes to get e-mail alerts, say when someone from their home town passes away, Taylor said. Tributes expects to make money from selling advertising, online memorials and gift items like flowers and cards.
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