Perhaps you remember this story that I read in a “true life confessions” mag in a waiting room?:

MY SISTER’S BRUTAL KILLING INSPIRED MY BUSINESS PLAN

It seems that, a couple of years on, a US entrepreneur has had the same idea and the result is a similarly Onion-esque report in Wired. Under the headline:

MONSTER.COM FOUNDER STARTS SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE FOR THE DEAD

the man in question is quoted:

“I’m extremely bullish about this business—it’s not a question of if it will explode, but when,” says Taylor, who spun the business off his baby boomer social networking site Eons.com. “I’ve watched and built a career on migrating the whole newspaper to the web, and the obituary section is the laggard category.”

…

“We need to learn from MySpace. For example, when a teenager dies there are thousands of condolences,” Heald says. “It’s a new, important, effective way of grieving.”