Thorpe-Dayton-Bird-Bricker-Gray-Wyant-Family History

Facebook

Those who know me well, know that I love Facebook.  Those who don't use Facebook will think that is weird because they presume that only teenagers use Facebook, which is false!  Of course teenagers and college students were the first ones to use Facebook, but of the 200+ friends I have on Facebook (about 100 of which are REAL friends and family) many are my age or older.

This post is directed to folks who don't know what Facebook is or why use it.

We all have friends with whom we'd like to stay in touch, but life so often gets in the way.  What if there were a way to find out about what your friends are doing without having to individually contact them all?  What if there were a way to update all of your friends who care to know what you are up to without having to individually contact all of your friends, including the ones who are too busy to care right now?  There is a way.  It's called Facebook.

Thankfully, I have all sorts of friends on my Facebook account:  church friends, work friends, Dayton's friends, old friends, new friends, close relative's, distant relatives, etc.  I only wish more of my real friends would use Facebook.  Too many are either intimidated by the technology or are convinced that this tool is just for kids.

Facebook, like the rest of the Internet, gets easier to use with practice and new features are added all the time.  Perhaps most importantly, there are new people joining all the time.  Your friends will find you if you are there and there are easy to use tools to help you find your friends.

There are lots of fun tools on Facebook.  You can upload and share photos.  This allows, for instance, for you to upload a photo and tag the people in the photo.  Those who have Facebook accounts will get notified.  When they open their own Facebook pages, your photo tagged with their names will appear on their pages as well as on yours.  There are also a variety of games that can be played.  It is also easy and customary to send friends public notes.  Because Facebook is a "walled garden" or a secure site for members only, it is far more decorous than the rest of the Internet.  People get along swimmingly and as a rule it is safe for adolescents (best if you friend your kids so you can see what they're up to).

I'm hoping to see you on Facebook!

Update on the Blog

Recognizing that no one comes to this page to hear me talk about this web site, I generally avoid self-centered posts.  That said, there are enough people reading the blog now that I think the mere fact that many of you are reading it makes this moderately interesting to some of you.

In the early weeks of blogging, I posted some photos and reports of a Thorpe family reunion held in 2006.  I sent multiple emails to folks inviting them to read the posts and several people did. 

Over time, as the content on the site grew, Google searches (and Yahoo searches) began to drive more traffic from people searching information about people I'd written about.

Last month alone, 174 people visited the site and viewed 400 different pages.  In May of 2007, 30 people viewed a total of 66 pages.  This means that we've had an increase in visitors of 480% and an increase in pages viewed of 506%.  You can see the data in the chart below.




In recent weeks, I've also started two new blogs that I will use for topics other than family history.  The first is a blog for current family news (some of which I would have posted here in the past but will no longer) and the other is for my photographs, a self indulgent tribute to my increasing interest in photography.  Spare yourself and stay away from the latter one.