Timeless Stories New Medium
“Every
single one of my friends is on Facebook,” says Westchester-based author
(and former Editor-in-Chief of The WAG) Emily Liebert. “Even
my grandmother is a member!” Liebert reasoned that the wildly popular
social media site (more than 400 million active users to date) had to have spawned
at least a few interesting connections. So, while she was finishing edits on
her first novel—Conversations with Friends—Liebert dropped
everything to do a little investigating. The result is Facebook Fairytales:
Modern-day Miracles to Inspire the Human Spirit (Skyhorse, April 2010),
a collection of 25 extraordinary stories made possible by this unprecedented
medium.
How did you get started with Facebook and what inspired you to write
the book?
I joined Facebook in the summer of 2008 because a friend of mine kept pestering
me about it. Every time I asked for photos of her kids she told me if I wanted
to see them, they were posted on Facebook. At first, my intentions were purely
voyeuristic. I read other people’s posts but never updated my own status.
Then, like everyone else, I got sucked in and really started thinking about
the cultural impact of social networking. And, in doing so, it occurred to me
that there had to be some amazing stories evolving from these hundreds of millions
of connections. So, one night, I went on Amazon.com to see if there had been
any books already written along these lines. I found books on Facebook etiquette,
how to use the site, and the history of its incarnation, but there was nothing
on the effect that Facebook was having on our society.
Where did you find the stories?
I started by posting a query to my Facebook wall saying that I was looking to
write this book and asking my friends to repost the query to their walls. I
thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fitting if I could find all the stories
through my own web of Facebook connections?’ I did end up getting a few
via this method, but not all of them. My next steps were to reach out to Facebook’s
press department and to see if Facebook would be willing to support the book.
As you can imagine, they get tens of thousands of book proposals and, of all
of these requests, they’d only ever supported two books. I submitted my
proposal and, to my surprise, got a call a few weeks later giving me the green
light! They said they would support the book by feeding me user stories and
granting an interview with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The other
stories I found through my own online research. As a longtime journalist who’s
had to track down many sources through the years, the beauty of this process
was that all of these sources were on Facebook and were, therefore, relatively
easy to find.
What
are some of your favorite stories in the book?
The 25 stories in this book feel like my 25 children! I love each and every
one of them. Of course, there are professional stories of careers launched through
Facebook, but I’d say it’s the personal stories that really resonate
with me. One of the most powerful stories, in my opinion, introduces Beth, a
young mother from Scarsdale, who received a kidney from a stranger named Cathy—another
young mother from Tallahassee, FL—thanks to a mutual friend’s status
update, which read: I have a friend named Beth who needs a kidney donor.
If you have type-O blood, please visit her website. Beth was dying. She’d
exhausted a dozen possible donors who matched her blood type but who still weren’t
compatible and her prospects were growing dim. Cathy was so touched by Beth’s
plight and, further, felt that the fact that they both had daughters named Olivia
meant it was kismet. She saved Beth’s life for no other reason than sheer
generosity of heart and soul.
Another story is about a couple—Seth and Melissa—who adopted a baby
via Facebook. They had been trying to conceive for years, had experienced a
tragic stillbirth of twins, and had undergone multiple cycles of IVF. Melissa’s
sister had even acted as a surrogate, being implanted with Seth and Melissa’s
genetic material. But nothing had worked, so they decided to pursue adoption,
which can be a very long process, not to mention expensive. One night, Seth
posted an adoption flyer they’d made to his Facebook wall and through
a social networking domino effect, two months later, they took home a healthy
baby boy.
The last story I’ll mention, which I hold near and dear to my heart, is
about a couple in Alabama who lost their teenage daughter, Jessica, very suddenly
to meningitis. Not only were they able to create a Facebook cause page to raise
money and awareness for meningitis, but Jessica’s father used Facebook
as a means of coping with his grief. Every day for the past two years, he’s
written her a personal Facebook note. It’s been his way of communicating
with her. He also keeps in touch with her friends through Facebook.
Tell me about interviewing Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, for
the foreword.
Mark was unbelievably gracious, and he’s obviously brilliant. It’s
easy to forget he’s only 25 years old and running a multi-billion-dollar
company. He’s also very press shy—even his appearance on “Oprah”
was discussed for over a year before he agreed to an interview. Mark’s
not interested in designations, like being named the ‘Top Entrepreneur’
by some magazine, or in having his face splashed all over TV. What he’s
interested in is building Facebook, connecting people all over the world, and
making the site as user-friendly as possible.
Do you think the Facebook phenomenon has run its course?
Hardly! I think we’re just beginning to witness its impact. One of the
main things Mark communicated in our interview was that 400 million members
is good progress, but closer to the beginning than the end. Within the next
decade, he expects that Facebook will be as ubiquitous as email or a web browser,
such as Google. And I couldn’t agree more.
Liebert’s book is available
on www.Amazon.com
