What’s Your Backstory?

Dan Birdwhistell (from his bigsight.org page)

Dan Birdwhistell is a member of Washington and Lee’s Class of 2001, and he wants to know your backstory. Actually Dan wants all your friends to know your backstory by posting it to your Facebook page. (Admit we’re all on Facebook now, right? The number of Facebook users over 35 years old doubled in the last two months.) Anyway, Dan has created a couple of different Facebook applications that you might want to try out.One is called My Backstory, and it “allows you to show the people, moments, ideas, places, etc. that collectively make up your backstory.” Its creators, Dan and Ben Sinclair call it third most interesting application on Facebook, but you’ll need to ask them what the first two most interesting apps are. The other application, Timeliner, allows you to build “an interactive timeline showing key moments in your life and the lives of your friends.” And if that’s not enough, you may want to check out the Web site that Dan has created called bigsight.org. If you go to bigsight.org and search for Washington and Lee, there’s no telling who all you might find on those pages, but it’s easy to try it out. We’re not sure why that page says Washington and Lee is in “Massilon, Va.” And the fast facts say the University has “401 graduates” when it means graduate students, but that’s OK. Someone is bound to tell Dan. But if you’re a big Facebook user, give Dan’s two applications a shot.