Reuniting people with their lost possessions - the strength of social media

You may have noticed a tweet I posted yesterday evening. I'd been onto Facebook and a friend from Scotland had found a camera case containing a memory card. He found a picture of a couple on it and had uploaded it to the site in an attempt to track them down and reunite them with their holiday photographs. He doesn't use Twitter and so I offered to share it on there for him.

It turns out that social media users love feeling like they can help someone out. I often see photos of lost teddy bears, but this was my first experience of seeing how wide something like this can spread. The initial Facebook post was shared 7,225 times. He also posted it on the Lomond Shores page which had 2,185 shares and 570 shares from the What's on in East Renfrew site. 

On Twitter, the post is still being shared but has been retweeted well over 9,000 times, which is impossible to comprehend, and that's without thinking about all the modified tweets. The post also trended in Australia, New Zealand and America. I've picked up 150 extra followers, presumably all keen to hear the happy outcome.

The comments were worth a read, lots of people identified the glacier in the photo, with the top suggestions being locations in Alaska and New Zealand, and a number of jokers hoped the couple pictured weren't having an elicit affair. However, one author suggested he's use that as a plot for his new book, so some good has come of it! Some people managed to identify the man's ski jacket brand (and even glasses!) thus working out the couple were British. Honestly, it's amazing what you can work out from a photo. 

There were a couple of suggestions that you should take a photograph of your address in case you lose your memory card, or use the meta data so it can be traced to you, which I'll definitely bear in mind.

One comment suggested I'd hear from the Daily Mail, and ironically I have, as well as the Independent. It's not my story to share, but it's the sort of thing they love and I'm happy to say it was a success in this instance. My friend who originally found the card has been contacted by someone who recognised the couple and has spoken to them today and the memory card should be back with them tomorrow.

I do love a happy ending, now if someone can just tell me how to stop these retweets, so I can start using my phone again, that would be grand!

By way of an update, you can read more in The Independent's report here.

Blog Every Day in May - Blog 9 - Favourite Social Media Channel

Image courtesy of emptyglass / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

I used to love Facebook, seriously, I had it bad. Probably five years ago almost everyone seemed to be on Facebook and if you didn't log on regularly you'd not know where people had been, which relationships had ended or what events you'd been invited to. Plus, you'd not get to check what photos you'd been tagged in before everyone else saw them. Seriously, a week away from Facebook and the world would end. Well, not really...

Nowadays my Facebook log ons are primarily to play Candy Crush (I know!) and although I do scan through the updates in my news feed it's not very often I read something interesting. Admittedly, over the weekend I found out from Facebook that a friend was moving to China for six months, but that's very much the exception recently. It's noticeable that there seem to be many fewer photographs uploaded nowadays. More often than not it's friends liking other people's statuses or photos, generally I don't know these people so my interest in the minutiae of their lives is sorely lacking. When it's not the brigade of likers, it's the attention seekers that are still going strong, with their "Why does this always happen to me? :o(" statuses which when any foolish, kind natured soul takes an interest in, they are batted away with a, "nothing", or the promise of a private message. Aagghh! Luckily my most annoying Facebook friend seems to have demoted me to her 'restricted' list which is working brilliantly. Other key frustrations are declarations of love / birthday wishes to friends or family members who aren't even on Facebook and the cricked neck and eye strain you get from uploaded photos which either need rotating or are just so blurred that it's a mystery what you're looking at. Seriously people, please look at your memory card before you just upload the whole thing!

Nowadays, it's Twitter that takes up more of my time. I like being able to catch up on what people are up to with little snippets of updates, it's even become my go to place for news, whether it's national events or local travel news. I have to admit I'm not much of a Twitterer myself (although I've amassed almost 3,000 tweets), but love reading what other people post. There are a number of people whom I follow who I'm genuinely interested in and would love to meet up with.

There's a lot of truth in the saying which I see frequently quoted on Twitter, "Facebook makes you hate people you actually know. Twitter makes you love people you've never met."