I lost my KingMax 8GB USB drive and before I realized it a stranger had sent me a Facebook message wanting to return it to me. This is the kind of story most people think can only happen in a small town or on a small campus, but really it could happen in any metropolitan area with the help of social networks like Facebook.

To give you a better idea about what I lost, it’s a small USB drive that’s about the size of a paperclip and has a rubber cover that makes it a little bigger than one of my iPhone earbuds.

You can imagine how easy this would be to lose, and now that I think about it I probably left it plugged into the back of one of the older iMacs we use in my Digital Art lab. I was surprised to get this Facebook message last night from a stranger named Christopher Holland:

Hey Max. A friend of mine found a blue “KingMax” 8 gig jump drive the other day. I plugged it in and saw your name on most of the files. Thought you might be looking for it. Let me know how you want to go about getting it.

I immediately wrote him back thanking him and we set up a place to meet. I met him today in the union and my little blue USB man was lost no more!

It’s pretty amazing that in this day and age Christopher’s friend didn’t just pocket my lost USB drive for themselves (I had Adobe CS4 on it with the key in a text file. Major score for anyone who can’t download it for free like we can at IU). It’s also somewhat amazing Christopher was able to figure out it was mine just by the file names (I preface most of my school work files with my IU username. I guess it finally paid off!). The most amazing part was that they were able to track me down and get in touch with me with hardly any effort thanks to Facebook (Understanding and properly using privacy settings CAN pay off!).

In the past if I were to lose something even with my name on it, the best I could hope for was someone turning it into a ‘lost and found’ (if one existed) and I would have to continually check back to see if someone turned something in. In the recent past, I might have been able to post to an online forum saying I lost something and continually check back to see if anyone found something similar or replied to me. Now with the power of social networks, someone can search Facebook or Google for ‘maxbeatt’ and find me making it extremely easy to contact me as well. 

Even though technology tools made it possible for my lost USB drive to be returned, none of it would have happened without the efforts of Christopher and his friend, and for that I am very thankful! I hope people who lose and find items in less quaint and friendly places than Bloomington, Indiana will remember how easy it can be to recover and return items using social networks.