Thursday, May 21, 2009

The Invitation to I Remember on Facebook

I wondered yesterday what the invitation to join Facebook and use the "I Remember" application on Footnote would look like - see Free Footnote Annual and/or Lifetime Subscriptions. I also wondered if it would work, since it didn't work two weeks ago when the "I Remember" pages were announced.

I submitted five email addresses to "I Remember" yesterday inviting my friends and family to view my "I Remember" pages. Here is a screen view of the invitation sent by email:



It used my email address and Facebook picture to request the email recipients to click on a link to a Facebook signup. When you click on the link at the bottom of the page, you get the Facebook signup page:



If you sign up for a Facebook account, the person who invited you is already your Facebook Friend. There is no explicit invite to check out the "I Remember" pages, which is what I expected to happen. The "I Remember" icon is shown down on the Applications row at the bottom of the screen. If you click on the "I Remember" icon you get the standard Facebook page with pictures in the "People Your Friends Remember" section.

New Facebook members can review the helpful information in the Facebook Bootcamp for Genea-Bloggers blog Facebook tag.

I have some questions about the Footnote offer:

* Do I have to invite five different persons to join Facebook and view the "I Remember" pages each day?
* Is it necessary to use a different "I Remember" page each day?

One of the commenters on the first post suggested that Footnote is a spammer and anyone who participates in this is a spammer too. I don't see it that way - if I found a product I really like and tell some of my friends about it via email, am I spammer, or just a friend trying to help others with similar interests? Some products provide free products or services for people that recruit members or subscriptions similar to this offer.

While Footnote is a commercial database provider, the Footnote Pages (and "I Remember" content) are free to anyone who wishes to use them. Sure, Footnote wants people to pay for their subscription, but they aren't forced to do so by using "I Remember" or Footnote Pages. The user does have to register on Footnote, just like they do on many other freely available genealogy web sites.

I note that Facebook's signup process invites the user to use his own address book to invite his correspondents to join Facebook. The Footnote/"I Remember" invitation process is similar.

6 comments:

John said...

As I understood the rules, I might create an I Remember page, and then invite five kin who are already members of Facebook to view the pages. And this would qualify.

Since the email that was sent in your name didn't mention anything about the pages you created, it definitely sounds like Footnote is misleading participants by making them think one email would be sent in their name, and sending a different email making an entirely different request. That could qualify as spam since you didn't really approve the message that was sent.

Abba-Dad said...

The offer was to 'share' the page with 5 people. So you don't have to invite anyone new. Just click on the share button and then chose 5 people from your long list of friends and you're done.

blakems said...

You don't have to submit a different name each day.

You don't need to submit each day, just once will enter you into the giveaway for each day's annual membership giveaway and the final lifetime membership giveaway.

Jane said...

Randy, I've found a very basic I Remember page for my grandfather that was obviously created from the information on him in the SSDI, so would it be better for me to create a whole new page for him with complete name and birth info, or to add onto this page that already exists?

Thanks!

Randy Seaver said...

Thank you John, Abba-Dad and blakems for the helpful information. I was kicking myself because I forgot to send out more invites yesterday.

Jane - I would use the SSDI or 1930 Footnote Page already available. When the SSDI pages appeared, I just added information to them for my parents and grandparents. If you create a new page, then there will be two Footnote Pages for the person. They don't have any way right now to combine the SSDI page and the 1930 Census page for the same person. They need that, but you can understand how hard it would be to do one at a time.

Jane said...

Thanks, Randy, I will do that.

Jane