The following is part of our series on different ways Facebook is used across the world. You can read previous posts in this series here. If you have a story you'd like to share with us, please submit it here.
Nobody likes to lose a valuable item—be it a wedding ring down the disposal or a pair of shoes forgotten under a hotel bed. Even more frustrating, though, is the loss of a camera: Not only is the object itself gone, but so too are the irreplaceable memories captured on it.
Knowing that frustration, Danny Cameron set out on a quest through Facebook to find the owner of a lost camera he found along the side of the road while vacationing on the Greek island of Mykonos last summer.
"In theory, with six degrees of separation, the whole world can be reached," said Danny, of Sydney, Australia. "I decided to see whether the world of online resources could track down the owner."
With that goal in mind, Danny started the Facebook group "Needle in a haystack". He uploaded photos from the camera to the group, with the hope that members would recognize someone they know among the strangers.
The group, which started on Oct. 17, grew virally as members faithfully invited others and posted notes of encouragement and thanks to one another for their attempted good deed. Within two weeks, the group ballooned to 235,000 people strong.
On the morning of Nov. 3, Danny received a Facebook message with astonishing news—his social experiment had worked. Some of the people in the photos recognized themselves, explaining that they were tourists who had been in Mykonos the day before Danny. The camera's owner, they revealed, was a woman living on the coast of France. Amazed at the human chain that had been created to find her, the woman was ecstatic to retrieve her missing item.
As for Danny, the success of his campaign led to a newfound respect for the power of social connections and human kindness.
"My simple act found that it is possible to be a noncommercial, nondenominational person just performing a random act of kindness, and I was happy to find (nearly) 250,000 other people who shared that philosophy," he remarked. "If the whole online community could be optimistic, full of hope and good will, then the possibilities for our capabilities would know no bounds."
Sara, an intern on Facebook's communications team, is keeping her camera close while skiing in Lake Tahoe
Nobody likes to lose a valuable item—be it a wedding ring down the disposal or a pair of shoes forgotten under a hotel bed. Even more frustrating, though, is the loss of a camera: Not only is the object itself gone, but so too are the irreplaceable memories captured on it.
Knowing that frustration, Danny Cameron set out on a quest through Facebook to find the owner of a lost camera he found along the side of the road while vacationing on the Greek island of Mykonos last summer.
"In theory, with six degrees of separation, the whole world can be reached," said Danny, of Sydney, Australia. "I decided to see whether the world of online resources could track down the owner."
With that goal in mind, Danny started the Facebook group "Needle in a haystack". He uploaded photos from the camera to the group, with the hope that members would recognize someone they know among the strangers.
The group, which started on Oct. 17, grew virally as members faithfully invited others and posted notes of encouragement and thanks to one another for their attempted good deed. Within two weeks, the group ballooned to 235,000 people strong.
On the morning of Nov. 3, Danny received a Facebook message with astonishing news—his social experiment had worked. Some of the people in the photos recognized themselves, explaining that they were tourists who had been in Mykonos the day before Danny. The camera's owner, they revealed, was a woman living on the coast of France. Amazed at the human chain that had been created to find her, the woman was ecstatic to retrieve her missing item.
As for Danny, the success of his campaign led to a newfound respect for the power of social connections and human kindness.
"My simple act found that it is possible to be a noncommercial, nondenominational person just performing a random act of kindness, and I was happy to find (nearly) 250,000 other people who shared that philosophy," he remarked. "If the whole online community could be optimistic, full of hope and good will, then the possibilities for our capabilities would know no bounds."
Sara, an intern on Facebook's communications team, is keeping her camera close while skiing in Lake Tahoe
