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Comment by sdfjkl | Hacker News Reader

Mark's grinning face right above this announcement bothers me for some reason: http://cl.ly/image/2k0p2v2A1U3t

it might be a decent (though seldom used) feature for these communication mediums to have (FB, G+, etc) to be able to hotswap your icon for just one message when the message is grave.

many gmail users now have icons (gee thanks, G+), and I can imagine that this awkwardness happens frequently in death notice emails sent to family and friends. Swapping it with even a generic frown face icon might do.

The ability to have a "tone profile picture" -- where you can have several pics and then pick the tone of a post....

I recall when a colleague I had worked with passed away suddenly and we were not yet connected on linkedin, and linkedin was sending me reminders to connect with her for months after she passed.

I emailed support at linkedin and told them of the passing - never got a response - but the alerts eventually stopped... though I do not attribute their stopping to my email to them.

LiveJournal has that ... you can have several avatars and choose for every post and comment.

Or how about the fact that thousands of people are "liking" the sad news.

They are not liking the sad news, they're liking Mark's words said about the sad news.

Just an unfortunate effect of Facebook's terminology (compared to, say, a Google +1, or an upvote). The intent is to promote and share the message, regardless of how it actually makes you feel.

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