SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook, the social networking major, has announced that it will allow users to designate a family member as their online "heir" to manage their account and make comments in their name after their death.

According to the announcement made, the heir will also be able to respond to requests from the deceased person's friends or relatives, who are not connected on Facebook, update the photo in the person's profile and file comments and photos of the deceased person on the social network.

The service initially will be available only in the U.S., although Facebook is planning to expand it to other countries.

If the users prefer, they will also be able to inform the social network to close the deceased person's account.

Till now, Facebook, after receiving notification that a person has died, allowed the account to remain online, but frozen - or "memorialised" - and thus without the possibility of editing it.

"By talking to people who have experienced loss, we realised there is more we can do to support those who are grieving..." Facebook said.

Google in 2013 became the first large Internet company to allow users to select online heirs for Gmail accounts and cloud storage services, among other things.

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