Trust the Power of Social Media to Unlock Your Past
Posted By Steve Ulrich on April 18, 2009
I have a friend who is a Send Out Cards distributor. He has built a business sharing what he knows about keeping-in-touch and using Send Out Cards as the delivery platform. He found an old photograph from Public School, cleaned it up and fine-tuned it in Photoshop. He went into the Send Out Cards editor and created a new greeting card with the photo of his old classmates on the front of the card. He sent the card out to one of his oldest friends, who was also in the class knowing she would get a “lift” by seeing it.
Several days later he goes on to Facebook and what does he see, the photograph from his greeting card and he is one of the taggeed people. In fact his friend had scanned the photo off of the card, loaded it to Facebook, identified and tagged everyone in the photo and posted it.
I tell this story to demonstrate the power of Social Media. Although he didn’t tell me, I’m sure that the folks in the photo started to connect with one another. The simple act of tagging others in a photo guarantees a person will get notified of the action and hopefully view the tagged item. Everyone sees all of the tags next to the photo. Suddenly there is this “rush” of excitement, realizing you can reach out to any of the folks, or that they may be reaching out to you!
Trust the power of social media, and trust your own intuition. We have an electronic opportunity to connect with our past and with folks that once played a part in our life, but somehow drifted away for whatever reasons. If you’ve wanted to connect with folks you may not have been in contact with for a while, go and search for those people in Facebook, Twitter, My Space, Linkedin or Google Alerts. You never know who you will find, or who will find you. It’s amazing how the memories of that distant past suddenly come alive when you do connect and for some folks, the conversation just continues as if time stood still and you both never aged.
I’ve had that happen to me with a friend who had moved away during Junior High School and another who I lost touch with after college. With both of them, the conversation just picked up where we left off, what an awesome feeling and a chance to examine where you’ve been, how you’ve grown and what you have accomplished as you share that with an old friend.
Here’s an invitation for you. Look for people you used to know, if they have a Facebook profile, or Twitter ID. Look for the old photos you may have kept around and present them online for folks who are looking for you. Thomas Wolfe said “you can never go home again.” This is true, but he hasn’t been around for the Internet age and the growth of social media. Examine the possibilities for reconnecting with folks from the past. You never know who or what you’ll find (and what you’ve missed).
Comments
Leave a Reply
Please note: Comment moderation is currently enabled so there will be a delay between when you post your comment and when it shows up. Patience is a virtue; there is no need to re-submit your comment.