1000 Memories

You've heard of Facebook and Twitter, but there's a lesser-known social network called "1000 Memories" that might be particularly interesting to fans of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. 1000 Memories is an online social platform for uploading, organizing, and sharing photographs, both historical and personal. And because memories come in so many shapes and sizes, 1000 Memories also supports content in the form of audio, video, stories, documents, and quotes, and allows users to add dates, tags, and captions to digitized photos. 1000 Memories aims to permanently preserve digital photographs—they work with the non-profit Internet Archive to ensure that uploaded content is never lost. 

On 1000 Memories, users store content in a virtual “shoebox”. Users can elect to allow friends and family members to also add to their shoeboxes, creating a shared online memory quilt. Users can also create a "Family Tree" to map their family heritage with digital photographs, documents, video, audio, etc. It also connects family members and their shoeboxes in one integrated location, creating a shared, visual dialogue of memories. Whereas a program like Historypin showcases photographs, video, and audio in the context of a geographical location, 1000 Memories displays content within the context of connections between family and friends.

A 1000 Memories Family Tree page

Want to see how it works? Click here for a sample Family Tree of Tolkien’s beloved hobbit, Bilbo Baggins. And click here for Ernest Hemingway’s Family Tree.

A recently launched smartphone application called "Shoebox by 1000 Memories" makes the network mobile, utilizing the iPhone’s camera feature as a convenient mobile scanner. While the app is at present only available on the iPhone, mobile developers are currently working on a version for Android. Traditionally, scanning photos has been an arduous and expensive process. But with Shoebox, users simply take a picture of an old photograph or document and upload it to their 1000 Memories profiles through the iPhone application.

Curious? Check it out and let us know what you think in the comments section!

Uploading a photo to 1000 Memories

--Posted by Information Technology Assistant Kathryn Barnard