Want to keep your social media profile ‘alive’ after you die? Well, you can do just that. Facebook has just introduced what it calls a legacy contact, someone to look after your page after you die.

The feature is not available in New Zealand yet as it is being introduced in the US before being rolled out elsewhere

Vanessa Callison-Burch, product manager, Jasmine Probst, content strategist and Mark Govea, software engineer wrote on Facebook’s newsroom that once a person’s death has been notified, “we will memorialise the account.”

Once you have chosen a legacy contact, the person will be able to write posts on the Facebook account’s Timeline, for example, to announce a memorial service or share a special message.

New friends you will never know

Don’t worry, even after you go, you can still make new friends as your legacy contact will be able to respond to new friend requests from family members and friends not yet connected.

What your legacy contact can’t do however, is to log in as you, or read private messages. Your settings will remain as before.

You can however give permission for your legacy contact to download an archive of photos, posts or profile information shared on Facebook.

Facebook advises you to do the socially-acceptable thing though: let your legacy contact know you have left him or her in charge of your social baby.

You can however chose not to leave a social media footprint. There is an option for you to permanently wipe out all traces of you having ever existed in the social media space.

Until now, when someone passed away, no one can touch the account. If you prefer to not leave any legacy contact, you might just be able to stay immortalised, on Facebook.