Issue 24.11
Facebook is a great tool for genealogy: You can keep in touch with family, share photos and even tap into free apps designed with family historians in mind. With notes from Thomas MacEntee.
Family history buffs have been flocking to Facebook recently — and not just to reconnect with high school buddies or play FarmVille. The popular social media website is actually a great tool for genealogy: You can keep in touch with family, share photos and even tap into free apps designed with family historians in mind. The seven apps highlighted here can help you find resources and family connections. In addition to genealogy-focused options, look for other handy research helps, such as the WorldCat app for locating items in libraries. As with all Facebook applications, be sure you fully understand what types of personal data an application collects from your account when you install it.
Family Tree is a social networking app from FamilyBuilder and lists 270 million potential relatives. You can build your family tree, add photos, and connect with and search for family members. Be prepared for a plethora of ads — some of which will appear related to FamilyBuilder, but aren’t.
Family Builder is Facebook’s first family history game, Family Village is like FarmVille for genealogy. You can build your family tree, create an ancestor village and “immigrate” others to it, invite family members, and learn about your ancestral heritage. The app is still in development mode, so you may find some glitches. Family Village encourages feedback.
I Remember is from Footnote and brings its popular pages feature to Facebook, letting you create a memorial page for a friend or relative. I made one for my dad, you can add photos, create a timeline, map locations, post memories, and share stories. Before starting a new memorial page, search to see if one already exists, there are a lot created from the Social Security Death Index.
For additional information, Shanna Jones can be reached at (435)628-4900 or shannasjones@msn.com