Reflecting on Finding Family, Retracing my Genealogy Journey on Social Media

I started exploring social media with bevmargo accounts on Facebook (FB), YouTube, Twitter,.... Now, I am reflecting back on my genealogy quest, trying to remember how it started, the twists and turns, surprises, discoveries, over the years. Here is my list broken down into 5 major areas to reconstruct my searches and successes.  I've come a long way.
Tracking my Genealogy Journey:

1.  JewishGen: Family Finder bulletin board - posted surnames & towns, since ~2000

• 2011 triple success story published JewishGen testimonials page Jan. 2011
• Marc Ast photo of Abramowitz family matches my Henry Abramowitz
• Marc Gelkopf - found him by revisiting old JewishGen emails for missed clues.
• Yael Michaeli  - finds me in her first week on JewishGen - She sends me a photo, which unbelievably was my brother's Bar Mitzvah picture.
• 2015 - Mary Fay Emanuel contacted me - another Gelkopf in Australia 
• 2017 - Recently: Stephane Gehlkopf  found me through JewishGen, his first week, like Yael, July 2017. He connected me to Sylvie who lives between NYC, Florida & Paris.&  I met her for lunch in NYC.

2.  Sharing & Gaining Followers on Social Media - since 2008

• Facebook:  added photos, videos, documents to genealogy albums. (> dozen albums).
  My niece Danielle reconnected with Larry Bugaisky.
• YouTube.com/bevmargo:  added videos: ~20 videos, including a dozen digitized and extracted from the 4-hour Steven Spielberg Survivors of the Shoah VCR tapes for my mom, dad & uncle.
• Followers on YouTube, Twitter, Blogspot - at IAJGS Tammy Hepps referred to this as cousin bait, posting content that attracts cousins.

• Twitter - Remy Binsztok from Paris 9/17/2014 - random follower
• Blog & YouTube - Erwan Grandais  - 3/30/2015 Erwan found my TonTon videos and subscribed to my Youtube channel & also commented on my Blog 

3.  FamilyTreeDNA.com - DNA started with Y-test & Mt  11/2011 - added autosomal FF 2016.
I suspected Marilyn Binstock was a cousin.  We share personality traits and our dads look like brothers in photos!  Marilyn's dad & my brother Claude took the Y test to confirm our connection with a distance of 0, which means that our grandfathers or great grandfathers were brothers.

4.  MyHeritage.com Family Tree Smart Matching - joining other family trees & networking with other genies who share common branches,  since 2011.  Be wary, any wrong info will get propagated to many other Trees.

5. Traditional Classic Research Methods

• Conversations 
• 1/2013 confirmed cousins with Diane - based on my brother Claude remembering visiting Konkowski from Canada.
• discovered Liliane Stzrausberg based on conversations with Diane.  Diane kept talking about "asking her cousin Liliane". One day I asked who she was & discovered she was the Strausberg cousin I had been seeking, on Diane's tree....just waiting for me to pay attention.

• Research & Records
• BMD records - found on Jri-Poland & Jewishgen - ordered from PSA- 2008-09 Gielkop marriage, ggpa Kiva Dawidiowicz marriage, gpa Shmul Dawidowicz birth
  
• USHMM onsite visit 8/2011 - searched ITS & DP archive records
• discovered my dad's cousin Maurice as Mordka Binsztock -  I recognized the  Paris address as my dad's apartment! My dad documented dates, names, places. However, could not locate living kin.....
• until REMY !!!!  a Binsztok from Paris follows me on Twitter 9/2014

• Red Cross ITS Tracing - provided me with Robert Binsztock birth record, son of Mordka. He was deported and murdered at age 8.
• Columbia U - onsite visit to view shoah videos in  usc archive   8/2011- discovered Israel Binsztok from Bedzin - with 3 sons in Florida

•  Meetings in-person and Face-Time 
• FB face-time / video-chats with Yael, Stephanne, Quentin Schneigeiger
• my sister Simone & niece Danielle went to Israel to meet Gelkopf cousins, Rosalyn & Marc.  Simone also went to Australia to meet other Gelkopfs - Mary Emanuel
• met Sylvie in NYC