Facebook Adds “Widowed” Relationship Status

September 1st, 2009

By Eric Eldon

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.

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5 Responses to “Facebook Adds “Widowed” Relationship Status”

Rena Says:
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
herzmeister_der_welten Says:
September 1st, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Where’s “Have a harem”? :->
Ten Ways to Identify Trustworthy Social Media Communication Professionals. | GAby Menta Says:
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 [...]
A Thoughtful New Way to Remember Facebook Friends Who Have Passed Says:
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 [...]
carlton Says:
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