Facing Your Fear of Facebook

                               By Cathy Ivins, Director of Publicity

Since writing my first article on "Facebook for Genealogy - Friends with Benefits" which appeared in our January 2013 Newsletter, I have found Facebook to be even more beneficial for genealogy, yet its reputation continues to haunt the "likes" of many. Besides connecting with family, genealogy sites and groups are all over Facebook, so a wealth of information is out there, and it's free.

I have joined and created Facebook groups with my family surnames. They are "closed" groups, which means someone in it must invite you to join or you must request the administrator to do so. You can find the group name and description if you search it, but nothing else. Once I can confirm someone is related to me, I roll out the red carpet and enjoy the new information I learn, besides putting faces to names on my tree.

Recently I met a cousin from my Grand-Uncle's line that my large family never knew. He looked up our surname to show his little boy battling cancer how big his family was.  He was amazed to find out how we were related. Of course he did find the right person to ask! It has been most exciting to connect and share information, stories, and even original records. And, his prayer circle really expanded for his son. He created a page so we could all follow little Bradley's stem cell transplant from his twin sister. Thankfully it has been most successful. I would never have known about my Illinois family members without Facebook.

If you've been curious to enter the Facebook realm but inexperience or fear have prevented your venture, I'd like to offer some tips on getting your feet wet, with your socks on.

• First, create a brand new email address for yourself. This way if you leave Facebook, you can also delete this email account. You will login using this email address.
• When you register with Facebook they will need to ask you basic information which you must provide for your account (so they can protect their members against you!) but they will not publish, like first and last name, email address, gender, and birthday.
• When you choose a profile name, you don't need to use your last name. Some members use their first and middle only.
• Create a special password just for your Facebook account.
• For a profile picture, you can just use the default silhouette photo of a male or female, or upload a photo of something like your pet, favorite flower, etc. Later, if you post something on your page, people you have "friended" will see this picture, so make sure it's nothing inappropriate or embarrassing!
• You can also add a cover photo which anyone you friend can see on your profile page.
• Now you can start "friending" which simply means allow people you select to see what you post, and you can see theirs. You can search for them by their email address, or in the search box, or contact your friends for their profile name, and send them a "friend request".
• If you receive a friend request from someone, you can accept or ignore. Don't worry if you ignore someone, they won't know. You can also unfriend someone afterwards if you made a mistake or regretted it!
• You can also elect to not allow people to friend you at all!
• Facebook will allow you to add information about yourself for your friends to see. It is not required or necessary.
• You can use the search box to find public pages on your interests, like ours at www.facebook.com/bucksgen, or other genealogy sites. Once you visit their page you can click "like" at the top. Now when that page posts something, you will see it in your newsfeed on your home page. If they post something you really like and want them to know you like it, click "like". Now, when you do this, your friends will see on their newsfeed this post saying that you "like" it. So make sure you really want your friends to know you like it.
• This goes for friends' postings too. You'll see what they post. Now, if you don't like seeing what they post but don't want to unfriend them, you can click the little arrow to the right of their post and say "hide this" or "hide all posts from this friend".  They won't know! It's amazing what you learn about friends and family members by what they share on Facebook!
• If you upload photos you would like to either store on Facebook so you can access them anywhere you sign in to Facebook, or share them with your Facebook friends, you can select the privacy for them. If you click on a face, you can "tag" them by selecting or writing the name of the person. Facebook's facial recognition software is amazing. Remember once you tag someone, they will be notified. Of course someone else could do that to you too, but you can choose to block tagging from the privacy settings.
• A great site for how to join Facebook is http://www.wikihow.com/Use-Facebook

There are so many other tips to share on starting with Facebook, but these will at least allow you to check it out before going further. Once you are on Facebook, you can click the settings and read all the privacy settings. Facebook has been very much committed to security and has several tutorials available to help keep you safe.  

Finally, if you have any questions about joining Facebook, or creating a group or page, be sure to see me on April 11th at Council Rock High School!