Twitter, Google+ & Facebook – Oh My!

Do you sometimes feel like you are being pushed and pulled in different directions by the various social media platforms that you use with your one-place study? If you take a look in the top right corner you will see these three boxes. If you click on each of them you will connect with the Society’s social media platforms on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. Do you use any (or all) of these platforms? I think you will find that we each have our favorites and oftentimes we don’t understand why anyone uses the ones we dislike or don’t use. Sometimes we need to take another look or have a social media platform explained to us by an enthusiast and then we begin to see its benefits. This past week, I attended a hangout where a small group of us learned how and when to use Twitter and enjoy the experience. Now I get it and see how I can incorporate it into my one-place study and my online genealogy experience (more on that next time). Disclaimer: I love Google+. I joined within the first month of its beta release (as soon as I received an invitation!) and I haven’t looked back!

How do I love Google+ - let me count the ways:

• Google+ is based on my interests – I am able to engage with people about genealogy, history, education, technology, one-place studies, law, politics, photography, recipes, travel, and/or specific countries and each of those “circles” is its own separate group. So the people who I engage with about one-place studies are not subjected to my political discussions AND I am not subjected to their Caturday photos (definitely a win-win situation). It is easy to post publicly or privately with links, video, and/or images and the conversation continues with responses right in your Google+ stream.
• Google+ gives me free phone calls/video calls and a recording studio (Hangouts and Hangouts on Air) and they make it possible for people from all over the world (with an internet connection) to virtually meet up and share their knowledge, experiences, or just get to know each other. I don’t know about you but a quick meet up beats emails back and forth all day or phone messages where I might not get my questions answered or resolve outstanding issues. Simply put, face to face meetings are good things – the more people I meet from many places, backgrounds, and views the more informed I become. I can’t tell you the number of people who have “hung out” with me and taught me how they keep their data in a spreadsheet, or shown me how to use a software program or app, or worked together as a group in a virtual meeting all across time and continents – simply amazing.
• Google+ gives me a YouTube Channel – I can see you thinking “why would anyone want a YouTube Channel?” Well, several individuals and organizations use their YouTube Channels to post helpful tutorials, many archive their monthly meetings, and others post their in-person seminars. And YouTube operates as a repository of sorts for everyone else’s videos – want to learn tips and tricks for your new cell phone, wondering how dna testing works, or how to use your mapping program, or how to use hangouts, or how to manipulate data in spreadsheets, or how not to put people to sleep with your PowerPoint presentations – it’s all there, you just have to search for it!

So why not click on the red Google+ box and follow the Society for One-Place Studies. Join our Community and treat the Google+ stream as a newspaper of sorts. Read the news posted by others and post your own news! Keep up with genealogists and family historians from all over the world. Join us at our next hangout on air, and check to see if your place of interest has a community and then follow it. I treat Google+ like a newspaper and read through and comment on posts (or post some of my own) in the early morning with my cup of coffee and then again after dinner with a glass of wine or cup of tea. Google+ is an everyday thing for me, but I do put on the timer because all things in moderation. In my next two blog posts I’ll share with you how I use Twitter and Facebook. And I would enjoy hearing what social media platforms you use and how you use them. Until then, I hope to see you on Google+!

Tessa Keough