Before blogging became a big business, Stern created a tech blog called Center Networks, which became a go-to destination for many in the early Web 2.0 movement. Later, he sold that business and shifted focus to a new startup called CloudContacts — and more recently, he moved from his home town of New York to Austin, Texas to start a company called Let’s Talk Fitness.

My good friend @allenstern has passed. Founder of @centernetworks back in the day. The original blogger king, and a heart of gold. :(

—
Louis Gray (@louisgray) April 07, 2013

Having struggled with his weight for much of his life, Stern poured his energy into becoming more healthy, and had lost more than 125 pounds in the past year or so, according to his friend Louis Gray. His most recent business was aimed at helping others achieve similar results with the use of fruit and vegetable smoothies and other products, and he had built a large following for his newsletter.

Here’s what Om had to say about Allen:

“He was a stand-up guy and always spoke his mind. He never took to fools and as a result always found himself defending those who couldn’t defend themselves. I met him once, briefly at a Techcrunch 50 event, but we were internet friends and often exchanged Facebook and Twitter messages. He was always in good cheer, ready to share a moment of sadness and spread the happiness. As a fellow Yankees fan, he and I would often talk baseball during our exchanges.”

Tech and health blogging innovator Allen Stern has died. He was a kind man with a lot of integrity & hustle. facebook.com/allenstern/pos…

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Marshall Kirkpatrick (@marshallk) April 07, 2013

Louis Gray, a startup advisor who now works at Google and wrote a remembrance of his friend on his blog, had this to say:

“I’ll miss Allen. I missed it when he stopped posting as regularly to CenterNetworks as he once did. But more, I’ll miss the fun email threads and fun phone cals that always left me laughing and feeling better. Death sucks and tonight, I’m sad. Bye, Allen.”

So terrible to hear that @AllenStern, a longtime NY tech fixture, passed away this week: bit.ly/14NHAq9 (via @DanDotLewis)

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Caroline McCarthy (@caro) April 07, 2013

Others have also posted their memories of Stern, including Dan Lewis — who founded the site ArmchairGM and is now the director of new media for Sesame Workshop — and another early blogger named Duncan Riley, who said Allen would be sorely missed by friends who “came to appreciate a big guy with a huge heart who spoke as we all should: honestly and from the heart.” Author and entrepreneur Jesse Stay posted on his Google+ page:

“This is devastating news – even though we never met in person (but I sincerely hoped to, and have had numerous remote video conversations with him), I considered Allen Stern a dear friend of mine. He always knew how to lift people up and make them laugh. I sincerely enjoyed his health posts as of recent, and am very sad to hear of his death. This was way too soon, and many, I’m sure are mourning with me.”

Oh my. My friend @allenstern has passed. A big loss to our community. Very sad.

—
Micah Baldwin (@micah) April 07, 2013

As tech blogging became more and more of a cut-throat business, Allen remained a personal friend to most, and was always sincere in his openness to others. As Om put it: “The world just got a lot less nicer because of this one subtraction. Give heaven a taste of your heaven, Allen — you will be missed by me and thousands of others whose lives you touched.”

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr user Chris Tingom

It works like this: simply send the email address of your friend (or enemy) along with an obituary showing a similar name and, voila, they’re on the other side. In the case of BuzzFeed, the site killed off its New York reporter John Herrman by sending Facebook an obituary for a 78 year old Nebraskan “John Herrmann” (two N’s) from last June. Such pranks mean your victim must spend hours or days persuading Facebook that they’re still here.

We can assume Facebook is scrambling to fix this mess and, to be fair, this isn’t really the social network’s fault since this sort of trick can be played off-line too (for instance, Israel’s Mossad has printed obituaries of still-living militants it was hunting). But the Facebook prank does illustrate yet again how the social and legal rituals that accompany death in the real world can carry over poorly to the digital realm.

Other examples include the impermanence of photos as well as licensing rules that mean you can’t pass on iTunes and other digital content in your will. It may be a matter of time before state governments — who have long made rules about things like wills, cemeteries and death certificates — begin to update these rules for the era of social media. But for now, many death rituals will be determined by the young men who run tech companies.

(Image by Stocksnapper via Shutterstock)