What is the Personal Value of Your Facebook Memories & Anniversaries?

By Tim McHale

I’ve been getting so many 10-year Anniversary reminders from Facebook lately that I began wondering just exactly when I joined. Turns out it was October 2006. At the time, there were only 2 other digital geeks in the entire digital media industry that were also FB members who I knew personally.

During year one and for a while after, I would go on FB once every few weeks to see if anybody posted anything. I knew I was early within my peer set, since my older daughter had kept me apprised of the goings on with Facebook since she joined in the first wave of Ivy League schools originally included, back in 2004.

We were consulting for a college marketing-based client, so I was very attuned to what young adults were doing; but since I did not have a .edu address, regardless of my interest, I was not allowed in.

Shortly after FB’s policy changed, my daughter gave me a heads up about their policy change. I quickly registered and then something underwhelming happened… nothing.

Then, in the second half of 2007, I got an invite from a friend. I was like, “Wow!”

And then another. And then another. And then another. And so on and so forth. For the next 6 weeks, I was astounded that FB had finally entered the consciousness of Madison Avenue. By the end of 3 months, I had well over 400 friends. It was the new digital Piazza.

That’s when the learning began. Each of us now connected on FB were learning how to communicate properly to each other. The choices were interesting. The first wave of tools are mostly lost in my subconscious. I remember the page takeovers, the first wave of social ads and the “netiquette” of determining who to allow as a friend. I remember that it took me until 2012, a full 6 years before I ever blocked anyone. That was the era of the national Romney/Obama election and the political cat scratching was a bit more than almost any of us had ever imagined.

Up until that point, politics was something that was only discussed on family holidays, after imbibing heavily, so you could tell your relatives what you "really" thought of them! Nowadays, not so much on social. Most people have picked sides. We also know better what to expect about each of our personal social posting habits.

In some ways, becoming more "social" has unfortunately depersonalized us to each other, but that's a topic for another rant.

While being social personally and being in the digital business, whenever some new social tool comes out, like then, I almost automatically join, to keep up with innovation and for curiosity, but am rarely a major joiner until I see the value.

With Facebook, the value was and continues to be obvious. Back then, there were so many different things to learn. You could really see the value of friends and friends of friends, and so on and so forth.

Cut to now, here 10 years later. Almost daily I am getting multiple anniversary reminders of when friends of mine connected on FB. I have been reluctant to share any of them though, since the timing is such that it simply designates the time the friend and I connected on FB. We were friends before, some for a few years, others for a few decades, so it's more a testiment to when FB entered our relationship. Nothing more.

To that point, the “On this day” tool now comes almost daily, since I was a frequent poster back then and still am. My memory is often jostled a bit every morning on the events of the times that happened “on this day” be it a year, or a decade ago.

In that time, a few of my friends have passed away, though no one has done anything to take their FB page down. Not sure what the “netiquette” is on that. However, while I haven’t used it in years, I know I still have a yahoo address. Somewhere I know there may even be a Myspace page around that I once used to dabble on.

We just passed the 16 anniversary of 9/11. That’s one I will never need a reminder on.

But I’m not sure that most of these others are anything more than "solutions looking for problems," which take up mindless bits of digital space. I appreciate FB’s attempt at keeping us connected to our past, present and future.

But these posts from memory lane might be better received if they are positioned a bit more sentimentally; like paraphrasing Gatsby’s last line, "So we “post” on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Right now, "they're [not] worth the whole damn bunch put together." 

For those interested in seeing the Timeline of Facebook's evolution, check out this Wikipedia site which tracks all the small and large changes that the world's largest social network has made since its launch almost a decade and a half ago.