To help in our mission of engaging the wider Family in family history, we’ve just opened up our streams of world events to everyone, whether they use Twile or not. This means that anyone can view a Twile timeline of World War 1 or big inventions, for example, even if they don’t yet use Twile to record their family story.
There’s a quote attributed to author James Patterson that will explain how we think these public streams can help:
“There’s no such thing as a kid who hates reading. There are kids who love reading, and kids who are reading the wrong books.”
Family historians often struggle to engage their family members in their research. Are they really not interested in where they came from and how their ancestors lived their lives? Or are they simply reading the wrong book?
We hope that by encouraging people to explore world history events on a timeline we’ll be able to help them take the next step and start recording their own lives and those of their parents, grandparents and children. Every memory and photo they add to their family timeline will be something preserved that could otherwise be lost forever.
Right now we have the following streams that you can explore:
- World War 1
- World War 2
- Inventions
- American Revolutionary War
And we are working on many, many more.
Can you help?
We’re looking for people who can help us put together streams on specific topics that would make good timelines. Are you an expert on the American War of Independence or the history of London or the life of Ghandi? Please get in touch by sending us an email to [email protected] – you could have your own stream on a Twile timeline!
We’re also looking for suggestions on what streams we should add next – please let us have your ideas.
Add streams to your family timeline
If you already have a Twile timeline, you can add any of our streams of world history to help give context to your family story:
- Log into Twile: www.twile.com/timeline
- Click the ‘In View’ button at the top of the timeline
- Move the sliders on the right hand side of the page to activate any of our streams
- Click ‘Done’
- You should now see your chosen content on the same timeline as your family history
Privacy
By the way – although we’re opening up access to our streams of world history, everything you add to your own Twile timeline is still totally private and secure – nothing you share on Twile will ever be made available to anyone outside of your family. If you’d like to know more about our approach to privacy at Twile, I’d suggest this article we wrote a while back: Twile Privacy
