Facebook versus face time…Do archaeologists need Facebook? Is it a public outreach necessity in the 21st century? We can weigh in on using Facebook (FB) on one particular project, the Abercorn Archaeology site in the Savannah, Georgia area. (See “Abercorn archaeology” on FB.) This project was funded by the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) and conducted by New South Associates (NSA) of Stone Mountain, Georgia. The project has a major public outreach focus including: public tours (four 90-minute tours daily), a full-time public archaeologist, interpretive signage, a web site, a Facebook page, a children’s book, and an educators’ curriculum. Fieldwork is complete, but we continue to update the Facebook page with additional information from the fieldwork, laboratory analysis, and other behind-the-scenes efforts. 

Cursory analysis suggests that the FB page is an important tool for this project. Many of the 1,098 visitors who took guided tours learned about the opportunity through the FB page. By including photographs (by permission) of visitors to the site in FB albums we increased their feelings of involvement and generated a larger audience when these posting were shared by visitors with family and friends. Many of our most numerous post “hits” (1,500 and 1,700 unique visitors) were generated to a greater degree when the posts went viral (shared or picked up by others) as opposed to hits by people who already friended us on FB.  We also try to vary the posts by covering archaeologists working, “before and after” excavation sequences of features with interpretation, occasional artifact shots, general preservation and archaeology issues, and non-fieldwork such as research, curation, etc. The FB page has also provided a useful forum for gently showing the “how and why” of archaeology from a documentation versus looting perspective and as insights in our answers to questions from FB messaging and post comments. The main challenges … keeping viewer’s attention in between “exciting field discoveries” and FB posts, and following the completion of fieldwork. What about you? Have you had good, bad, or indifferent experiences with using FB as a public outreach tool? Have you tried ways to expand the reach of FB and/or use it in a unique way?