Battle of Online Death Notices

Intriguing article from Boston Globe yesterday about tributes.com and its effort to challenge legacy.com in scooping up advertising dollars for paid obits.

Both Web sites challenge newspapers for dominance in the market for Death Notices, those paid eulogies that have nothing to with the news obits written by reporters. Both tributes and legacy run wire service stories on major deaths and offer little more insight than that.

What's the value to a family of placing a paid notice with one of these Web sites rather than the local paper? And how can newspapers offer more opportunity for families to shape the legacy of their loved ones through paid notices in print and online?