Local Historypin Facebook page?

[Translucence]

Hi, as mentioned earlier, I really feel that Historypin is missing out on the big community craze for historical photos at the moment since there is zero way of knowing if anyone - or no one - is actively pinning photographs in your city.

Can I set up a community Facebook page for people using HistoryPin in my area?
(I have the ability, just need to check if you approve of Facebook groups promoting HistoryPin)

Just as an FYI ... one of many Facebook Pages currently active in my city of Melbourne is "Lost Melbourne" which simply displays old photos of Melbourne.

They have 46,000 page fans. I notice the official Global HistoryPin page has 6,000 page fans.

- Chris

[EastMarple1]

Hi Chris,

I have been a pinner since the early days but don't feel the need to "like" the Historypin page on Facebook as I am already one of the 10.3K followers on twitter. As part of an active vintage photograph community on Flickr I often come across fantastic photos that would make terrific pins and have sometimes mentioned Historypin to a photo's owner. Invariably they are just not interested, don't have the time, so I have given up suggesting it now. But I would have thought that a localised Facebook page would be very worthwhile for a city/town. Just one thing that always concerns me when pictures are  posted to Facebook though, many people have the ability to download them and save them to their own computers. Many local history societies now put their name all over their pictures (as per a watermark) to deter this.

 

As for being an active pinner or not... initially I had a backlog of photos to upload to Historypin but once I had finished doing so then activity died away... well until I buy something worth pinning of course. :-) From time to time though I will still check in and see what activity there has been on my account or if any more photos have been added in my area.  Or I will do some work on a Collection.

 

You mentioned location I believe in one of your posts: I must say that living in England I have got rather fed up with the American bias coverage. Year of the Bay is ok if you live Stateside but not for the rest of us! No doubt you have felt the same 

[Translucence]

On Monday, June 9, 2014 7:40:52 PM UTC+10, EastMarple1 wrote:

 I often come across fantastic photos that would make terrific pins and have sometimes mentioned Historypin to a photo's owner. Invariably they are just not interested, don't have the time

Might they be interested in giving you copyright permission? Historypin allows you to list all the details of what copyright is on the picture and provide a link back to the original source, photographer etc

 

Just one thing that always concerns me when pictures are  posted to Facebook though, many people have the ability to download them and save them to their own computers. Many local history societies now put their name all over their pictures (as per a watermark) to deter this.

Well it's not just Facebook. If you see a picture anywhere on the internet, it's already been downloaded to your computer. Though many sites try, there's no perfect way to stop people saving the pictures - I mean if all else fails they could photograph their screen!

I'm guessing the groups putting watermarks all over their pictures have to consider what they're really gaining by doing so. Might they be better just not putting their pictures online? (But what is the point of a picture if no one can see it?)

re: location

I haven't really paid much attention to HistoryPin HQ's projects. My main interest is local history so it's just pinning pictures in my city and looking up areas with photos.

But I'd be intrigued if HistoryPin's main activities are focused on America since the HistoryPin website map always resets back to pointing to England every time you visit/reload.

I mentioned that irritation to FB HQ a couple of years ago but it didn't change.

Also I'm pretty sure HistoryPin HQ are based in England.

[Jon Voss]

Hi Chris, 

You bring up some great questions.  You should absolutely feel free to set up Facebook page for Historypin in Melbourne.  It may prove a very useful test case in fact, looking into if/how/why people connect to one another in local places through digital tools. However, I'm curious why you would prefer to start a different FB page rather than share content on the bigger FB group?  Since people are already looking at historical photos there, it seems it might be better to post photos that link back to Historypin or screenshots of Street View overlays, etc.  There is of course the problem with attribution and citation on these local history sites, which also points to the opportunity there of creating better tools for institutions to share their content in ways that reward citation/attribution. 

The phenomena of these local history pages are very interesting and I think you've continued to underline the value and importance you place in local community connections.  If you look at the Lost Melbourne page for instance, what is it about it that you think draws so many people?  Is it the content, the conversation, the local connections?  Do people just love looking at old photos, or is there more to it than that?  Is it the best/easiest way for people to connect to history because they're already on Facebook?  For us, we've been looking very closely at the potential for strengthening or creating connections between people in local areas through history, and finding the best methods and tools for that. 

Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Thanks, Jon

Jon Voss
Historypin Strategic Partnerships Director
ph. 415-935-4701

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[Jon Voss]

I'm picking up here that you two are interested in two rather different things, which gets at some of our challenges with Historypin.  One of you is interested in vintage photographs of England, and the other in local historical photographs of a specific location (Melbourne).  The ideal is that our tools can by used by many people for different purposes, so we try to look at those uses that also intersect with our social goals of strengthening social capital through local history. There is often overlap, but not always, which leads to a lot of great discussions like these. It's actually quite remarkable that you're connecting on this international forum.

I like Chris's solution of bringing content from one site to another, while verifying the copyright and licensing status. Speaking of Year of the Bay, that's one project in which we're experimenting quite a bit with this.  When there's a discussion around a particular piece of content on Facebook or Twitter, Kerri is working to bring that back onto Historypin where the metadata can be enriched and the content owner informed of the new suggestions and evidence. In the digital world, the reality is that these conversations could be happening across multiple platforms. 

@EastMarple1 I assume you're referring to American or Year of the Bay mentions on our Twitter stream?  If so, I think that's because of the heavy community engagement piloting we've been doing there, so often sharing tweets in that regard.  We try to keep it pretty balanced with activities and tweets from around the world as we learn about them too. I monitor a Twitter search of "Historypin" which shows me conversations going on beyond just our handles, and am always surprised to see the cool projects and uses coming online with the platform.  But what would be even more helpful for us is to hear what kinds of things you would rather see us covering or sharing through our social media accounts. 

Chris, you're right that Historypin is based in London (we try to share some action photos from time to time via social media).  We do have a fun "team page" at the bottom of the Historypin site where you can see everyone who's involved.  In addition to London, we've got folks in Sofia and San Francisco, and with our small and amazing non-profit team we're always very proud to often be compared with well-financed giants like Flickr and Facebook.  Of course we couldn't do any of it without a passionate community of people that care about the sharing and discovery of local history, so thanks for your continued feedback and involvement. 

Jon

[Translucence]

Thanks Jon.

For me, the main potential of HistoryPin for people to be able to jump straight to historical pictures in a specific region. Melbourne is a very large place, and so "Lost Melbourne" is a very large group, an absolute torrent of pictures both coming through the official "mouthpiece" and the slightly hidden fan-post section. I've no way to know if I've missed photos that may be in areas I'm interested in. That's probably part of the reason why there have also sprung up a number of smaller groups starring historical photos in specific areas. But all of these groups also overlap - they will reshare each others photos or post to each others walls.

Having a specific HistoryPin local page will intent to funnel a heap of that stuff into the HistoryPin map. I may be getting ahead of myself, but all featured pictures will need to be linked on HistoryPin, so it won't be just a site for old pictures. And like I've said before ... HistoryPin at present gives me no real sense of community - it's rare for someone to comment on a picture and so the site feels dead silent, like no one is around. (I'm hoping that's not really the case). If people feel a sense of community on a site, they're more likely to get/stay involved and talk about it to others. People won't stay long if there's no community. I know some people just feel that they only have 3 family photos they want to pin and then there's no point in them staying on the site. Perhaps even having a community isn't enough - maybe people need to feel they can continue to contribute more after those 3 family photos, like perhaps my suggestion for having crowd-sourcing to set/correct image locations.

Regarding the Facebook history pages, I can't speak for everyone, but I'm pretty sure there's a lot of interest in the weirdness of seeing a familiar location with strange people and buildings sitting there like they own the place. (heh) Also especially on Lost Melbourne there's a bit of fun doing detective work on occasion, trying to work out where a photo is taken. So there's definitely a strong factor of people's familiarity with the city - not just any old pictures.

Chris

[robin aka georgiawebgurl]

I know this a little bit off topic, but in terms of why people use social media to share historical photos, my experience has been thus:

1)Identity
2)Connection -  with people locally/regionally or to a regional area (place they grew up) - old friends/family or to identify old friends/family

3)Education (Learn about history)

4)Nostalgia

5)Research

6)Organize the world/Understand humanity

7)Art/Creative value (some of just like to look at photos)

There is some research out there on viewing old photographs which support a lot of these elements (especially identity, looking at old photos of ourselves or places we lived helps us define and retain our identity (for those with memory issues). 

Personally, I see this within my own family network at Facebook. In my mom's family, there are 2 professional researchers and many amateur/casual genealogists, who are constantly creating new groups and pages. Currently, I am part of 5 family groups in Facebook, 2 of which share many of the same members. One is organized around a semi-famous ancestor; one is a smaller, more regional group; one is my paternal grandfather's family; one is my maternal grandmother's family and the largest is the international/ancestral family name (Clan, since it's the Scottish side of my family).

The problem is that Facebook does allow any kind of hierarchy with pages - so you can't make a subpage. It's one of things that I always mention whenever I have an opportunity to provide any sort of feedback to Facebook. I think if there was the ability to create subpages or subgroups, we would see a lot of redundant content disappear there (anyhow, off my soapbox)... :-)

I am fascinated by this sort of thing. I've been trying to figure out a way to work social data and historic photographs into a dissertation topic for a while. :-)

Robin

 

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http://contentdivergent.blogspot.com

[Jon Voss]

It's great to get everyone's thoughts on this.  It's something we've been exploring in depth for years and in collaboration with a number of partners, from academics to cultural heritage institutions to community organizations.  

Robin, I'd be happy to connect you to other people or teams that have been digging into this to pull it into a dissertation topic, or even pull you into more of what we're doing if it'd be helpful. If that's of interest, just ping me directly.

Thanks, Jon

[Mike Strange]

My experience with a local history society shows quite clearly that it should have been called a reminiscence society.  Very few of the members ever lit up about talks, research or discussion about subjects that preceded experiences of their own, their parents or possibly their grandparents.

I talked about HistoryPin to them as I assisted with the initial testing (2010?) I was excited about the opportunities to use many of our 7000+ images in the public domain instead of being locked away in our archives. But eyes glazed until I mentioned places they knew from only 50 or 60 years ago; then they were nattering away but much of it simply stories that appeared to be elaborated the more they talked - rather as if it were a competition.  When I tried to pin them down about facts that could be added with images on HistoryPin again the eyes glazed once more.

I went ahead and put on 192 images, have received zero feedback and, in general, the society members have not even bothered to look at it so I am delighted to see that there have been 3979 of the most popular image, one that would have preceded all the members but showed the 'Hop Bine' pub that had remained so through all of their lives until last year when it became a house 100 years on.

See us on http://www.biggleswadehistory.org.uk/historypin.htm

What a shame the fish-eye view has screwed up one of History Pin's key redeeming features - the ability to see the then overlayed on the now as this reflected the attitudes and interests of the 134 members of that society. If they were to look now they would see horribly distorted views and not bother to return ....... but we carry on pinning so we at least get something from it!

Mike