I had a chance this week to read a new book written by Drew Smith: Social Networking for Genealogists. Social networking is a new term; I cannot imagine such a book being written three or four years ago for anyone, let alone for genealogists.
Wikipedia.org describes social networking as:
A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail and instant messaging services.
Social networking has encouraged new ways to communicate and share information. Social networking websites are being used regularly by millions of people.
While it could be said that email and websites have most of the essential elements of social network services, the idea of proprietary encapsulated services has gained popular uptake recently.
Drew Smith obviously agrees that "Social networking has encouraged new ways to communicate and share information." He describes Flickr, YouTube, blogs, wikis, photo and video sharing web sites, and much more, always from a genealogist's point of view.
After the introduction, Drew Smith starts off with an explanation of much of the terminology which one encounters in social networking sites. He starts with an entire chapter devoted to RSS (Really Simple Syndication), which strikes me as an odd choice. To be sure, RSS is used by many social networking sites, but it is not integral to understand the usefulness of such sites.
The later chapters focus on the various kinds of social networking services. Author Drew Smith includes descriptions of many of the more popular online services: message boards and mailing lists (which have been available for more than 25 years), blogs (Geneablogy, Steve's Genealogy Blog, Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter, the Genealogy Blog Finder), wikis (Encyclopedia of Genealogy), collaborative editing (Google Docs), photo and video sharing (Flickr, YouTube, RootsTube), social bookmarking (Delicious), sharing personal libraries (LibraryThing), Podcasts (DearMYRTLE's Family History Hour, the Genealogy Guys Podcast), social networking for its own sake (FaceBook), virtual worlds (SecondLife), and genealogy-specific social networking (Geni, Dynastree, MyHeritage). He also provides screen shots of most of those services.
All in all, this book provides a good introduction to social networking to the genealogist who is not yet familiar with the concepts.
Genealogists may be reluctant to adopt social networking. After all, most genealogists probably got along fine without social networking sites for years; so, why should they change? The same was true for many past technologies: the World Wide Web, e-mail, genealogy software, and even personal computers. Many people were slow to adopt these new tools simply because they were accustomed to researching without them and did not understand the capabilities that each new tool provided. I wasn't around to see it, but I suspect the same resistance met the typewriter when it first became available: “I never used one before, so why do I need it now?”
"Early adopters" usually try new tools when they first become available and experiment to see if these tools have any usefulness for our interests. If so, these pioneers report to the rest of us about their successes and failures. Drew Smith is such an "early adopter" and pioneer. He has experimented with the latest tools available and is now reporting to other genealogists about his own successes and the successes of others that he has witnessed.
Perhaps the best summation of this book was written by the author in the Introduction:
If you think that social networks might have possibilities for you, Social Networking for Genealogists will confirm or refute that possibility and will also get you up to speed quickly.
Social Networking for Genealogists is published by Genealogical Publishing Company and sells for $18.95 on the company's web site at: http://www.genealogical.com/products/Social%20Networking%20for%20Genealogists/5446.html.
This results in Multiple Social Networking Disorder. Being unable to communicate in more than 140 characters.
Posted by: footnotemaven | May 04, 2009 at 11:01 PM
A fine, comprehensive review, Mr. Eastman. Excellent. In my Seven Stages of Genealogical Growth, Networking is the second stage. Any researcher who does not network is like the fellow who drives in first gear only.
Happy Dae·
http://ShoeStringGenealogy.com
Posted by: Dae Powell | May 05, 2009 at 05:16 AM
I am concerned about the security of the social networking sites. My experience is that most new users have no concept of securing their systems, i.e., they purchase a system with anti-virus software included, but do not understand that the software does not include updating. It requires either downloading free software or purchasing software with updating capabilities. Without doing this, their systems are open to infections which can be passed on to unwitting others. What is your, and others, opinion?
Posted by: Rendell J. Austin | May 05, 2009 at 10:35 AM
"Social Networking" seems like a wonderful idea, and it would certainly save me time and money in preparing and sending 50+ letters, which I am about to do. How does one find email addresses for people, in order to use "social networking" rather than snailmail? Selma
Posted by: Selma Neubauer | May 05, 2009 at 01:29 PM
Following a presentation about GENI.COM to a local genealogical society of which I am a member, I downloaded my tree on the site and got started by first inviting immediate family members. In particular, I thought it would be a great way to get my children and the grandchildren involved since it is similar to FACEBOOK only with a genealogical theme.
Over about a six month period my effort has paid real dividends. I now have at least 15 members of the immediate family including cousins who were known to me. However, the real bonus has been the fact I now have three 2nd cousins, who previously were unknown to me, who have joined and contributed information I would never have known about had they not joined the site. This could happen on other sites, I just happened to use GENI because of the presentation by their Director of Marketing.
Bottom line--it has far surpassed my expectations, especially in getting the younger generation interested in family history!
Posted by: Delbert Ritchhart | May 05, 2009 at 04:09 PM
A few months ago I started a social network group on FaceBook called "Albany County hilltowns history and genealogy." It is for researchers to share information on the history and genealogy of their ancestors who lived in four towns in western Albany County. I used my email list and various genealogical web sites that focus on Albany and nearby counties to let fellow researchers know about my new FaceBook site.
It would be easy to create a social network group based on a family surname using FaceBook, MySpace, etc . You would then go to a surname message board website such as Rootsweb and post a message telling users about your new social network group for people researching ancestors of that surname.
Social networking is a more personal way to communicate and exchange information than email or messageboards. You see pictures of the people with whom you are communicating and they become friends rather than just fellow researchers whom you do not know.
I used the Albany Hilltowns FaceBook site to recruit researchers to participate in a MediaWiki site called AlbanyHilltowns.com. All of us are able to add history and genealogical information on our common ancestors. Using wiki software allows adding URL links in a biography so that when a church, school, or cemetery is mentioned, one click takes you to a page giving in depth information about the place mentioned. There are also links to the farms on which they lived and even the houses they lived in. Since it is a rural area and marriages were between neighbors, there are many researchers of the same family surnames. A researcher can add to a biography some one else submitted to present additional information unknown to the original researcher.
This same idea, i.e. using wiki software, can be used to create a site based on a family surname. It could have sections for unconnected groups of the same surname. Anyone researching that surname could add biographies of their ancestors. Eventually some of the unconnected groups would find a common ancestor.
Thus a social network group in FaceBook or MySpace not only is able to exchange information among themselves, but they can also develop a site to permanently post and share their information. With many people working together a new site based on a place or surname can grow exponentially.
Posted by: Harold Miller | May 05, 2009 at 06:54 PM