Mobile Monday: Thank you, Facebook

By Stephanie Pitcher Fishman community, methods 3 Comments

Bullington Family c. 1920 - the "older" children

Photo in possession of Stephanie Pitcher Fishman

Never underestimate the power of social networking when cousins are on the line.

I watched Princess Bride last night and have a few lines in my head. OK, so that’s not exactly how the quote goes. Still, it is at the heart of what we want with family history…. cousins.

1. Share your photos.
It’s amazing the joy that photos bring. We all know it, but sometimes we forget what it means to others. I’ve been sharing photos with my cousins on Facebook, and it’s made me want to look harder at those that may have gotten lost at the bottom of a box or in the back of an album. Social media makes it so simple to share some of these photos. (Legalese… make sure you understand the terms of service and are ok with these before you upload your photos.)

2. Ask about their stories.
I have family stories on the brain at the moment. Between writing about it for some of my homeschooling-related posts and columns to prepping for an upcoming family wedding, I keep thinking of the stories that I want to hear as well as the stories that I want to share. Social media is great for making those connections when it’s been years since you’ve last spoken. Maybe it’s the faceless/voiceless format, but it causes people to open up and say hello far more easily than some may with a phone call. The stories that can be shared through messages and chatting, especially with younger generations, can be amazing.

3. Distance doesn’t matter.
If it weren’t for social media, I wouldn’t get to have near daily updates from cousins about their children or weekly updates about family that is “offline.” It doesn’t matter that I am more than 600 miles from some of them. I still got to see their children on their first day of school. As impersonal as some social media feels, it also shortens the distance. Silly little notes with my baby cousin make me feel like I’m 12 again. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Personally, I prefer Facebook for family and other social networking sites for friends and business connections. What’s your favorite? Do you use social media to connect to cousins?

3 COMMENTS

Mariann Regan

24 September 2012 Reply

You are making an excellent point. The stories that everyone now shares on social media, like Twitter and Facebook, are just like the stories that we treasure and whoop about when we find them in 100-year-old letters. In this sense we are writing our own history now, although we don’t realize it, on social media. I wonder if we can get a record of our Facebook posts — they seem so vast! Didn’t I read recently that our tweets are being “archived” in some Cloud or other, and soon we will have the complete record? Someone (?) said in a recent blog that we should get everything on paper now, because who knows whether technology will lose all our carefully put-together genealogy with tech updates of the next 50 years?

But it’s not just records. It’s ongoing relationships that is your point. So I’m going to “friend” more of my cousins. Right now I’m more on Facebook with my cousins’ children than the cousins themselves. Have to nudge them.

About the photos: Do you mean Facebook or some such might have proprietary rights to any photos you upload? Is that true?

Thanks for this post. It inspired me to think!
Mariann Regan recently posted..Before, After, and Coming Soon
Devon Lee

7 October 2012 Reply

Here’s a website that will turn your FB posts into a book. http://www.blurb.com/blog-book