Facebook Genealogy: unexpected benefits of social networking

As someone who’s very tech-oriented, I often spend a lot of time marveling at how cool the feature are in something like Facebook. Hey, cool, check out these ads. Hey cool, you can e-mail people from your facebook messaging dashboard.

But it’s good to be reminded every once in a while that there are tons of people on Facebook, and many other social networks, who have really cool experiences with people instead of technology. This is, after all, where the real value of Facebook comes from:

Until this month, I believed there were exactly eight Danzicos: my five other immediate family members, two aunts, and me. No others. When I broke character last month to invite my brother as a friend on Facebook (I figured it was the responsible older-sister thing to do), I found more than eight Danzicos in the search results. And not only were there Danzicos, but “D’Anzicas” too: the original spelling of my last name.

I think that’s kinda neat.

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