Facebook Adds “Widowed” Relationship Status
A small but dedicated collection of Facebook users who have lost significant others recently convinced the social network to add a new type of relationship status: Widowed.
It recently became available as a new option in addition to other relationship statuses available for user profiles, like “single” or “married.” You can see the full list of relationship status options Facebook makes available at right.
A few Facebook groups had sprung up to advocate for the change, the largest of which was “Petition for Facebook to create ‘Widowed’ as a relationship status!” with 2,564 members. Before the change, group members had been leaving heartbreaking comments like “you don’t know why this is important until you’ve been widowed.” Now successful in their goal, they’re talking about being able to disband the group.
It’s good to see the company recognize how making such a seemingly simple change can make a big impact on people’s lives.
September 1st, 2009 at 11:43 am
Yo, Facebook, here’s another idea: put the City/Town in the Where line for Events. It’s just as obvious a need as Widowed for relationship status. I even started a petiton group: http://www.facebook.com/groups/create.php?success=1&customize&gid=133403480822#/group.php?gid=133403480822
September 1st, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Where’s “Have a harem”? :->
September 8th, 2009 at 11:38 am
[...] of Facebook users are over 26 years old, and the site’s aging population has motivated Facebook to add “Widowed” as a Relationship Status. Three of the five most visited Web sites (and seven of the top 15) are Social Media [...]
October 26th, 2009 at 9:31 am
[...] has made to recognize the tragic situations that its users have found themselves in. It introduced a “widowed” relationship status feature just a couple of months ago, for people who have lost [...]
January 26th, 2010 at 9:17 am
i think faceboook need to come up new bottons. like a love botton ect ect not just a “like” botton..lol
April 1st, 2010 at 4:43 am
I am a very young woman (mid-twenties) and I was very recently widowed. I am so thankful that facebook added that status- I am certainly not “single” quite yet, much less “seeking a relationship” etc. I feel like that status is considerate of facebook even if (thankfully) most people in my age bracket are not widowed nor know anyone of similar age who has been widowed.