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"It's an active conversation," said Brewster Kahle, founder of the nonprofit Internet Archive in San Francisco. "There are definitely people going in this direction."

The Internet Archive recently held a conference that included the Library of Congress and private companies to investigate tools that could do that. But Kahle says he worries that commercial services, even ones as big and powerful as Facebook, are not always the best way to carry something as invaluable as memories into the future.

"How long is Facebook going to be here? I don't know; how long did Friendster last?" said Kahle, referring to the unsuccessful social network that predated Facebook. "The idea of depending on the commercial service to be there forever is probably not a wise maneuver, but they certainly make things accessible in fun and exciting ways."

Facebook's partners say that desktop and mobile apps connected to the social network can be a powerful way not only to preserve a memory, but to bring new users to that service.

"The longer we've all lived in this digital age, the longer we've had this information collected about us," said Otis Chandler, founder and CEO of Goodreads. "I think what Facebook is trying to capture is not letting that data die."

Chandler said in the first month after Goodreads integrated with Facebook Timeline in January, its users have shared on Facebook 6.2 million book titles they have read or rated, and the Goodreads service has had a 50 percent jump in new users. One thing people are doing, he said, is joining Goodreads and listing all the books on their Facebook Timeline that changed their lives as they were growing up, whether it was the discovery of the "Dune" science fiction series in junior high school, or that unforgettable reading of "Catcher in the Rye" in high school.

"I think the only surprise is the extent to which people are sharing books into Timeline," he said. "More people are now discovering Goodreads as a result, because every book being shared is a link to back to Goodreads."

The ShoeBox iPhone app - an app for Android devices is about a month away - is free and can be downloaded from Apple's App Store. Most people, Adler said, upload photos first to the 1000memories site, and then decide which pictures they want to share with their friends, or publicly, on Facebook.

ShoeBox users have the option of allowing their photos to be found or not found in a Google search. 1000memories is also working with Internet Archive to backup images stored with the service, to assure those images are never lost.

For many users, the quality of the ShoeBox photo upload experience will depend on how new their smartphone is.

With an older iPhone 3G, the app produced digital copies of snapshots that were disappointingly fuzzy when they were posted to Facebook. A new iPhone 4S, however, produced much sharper digital images that were barely distinguishable from the original after they were posted to Facebook.

Adler said he and Huneycutt have always been interested in telling stories through photos. In 2005 and 2006, the friends handed out disposable cameras to Mexican migrants crossing the border into Arizona, as well as to members of the Minutemen group trying to stop them. The photos became the foundation of the Border Film Project, a book and a website.

"We've always kind of been in the story-telling business," Adler said.

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WAYS TO USE FACEBOOK TO PRESERVE AND SHARE MEMORIES:

-ShoeBox and 1000memories: The ShoeBox iPhone app and the 1000memories website allow users to make a digital copy of old photos through their smartphone camera, and to share those digital images on Facebook or on1000memories.com.

-Goodreads: This "virtual bookshelf" and free iPhone and Android apps allow readers to share the books they've read on Facebook Timeline, to read or write reviews of books, and to link to online book sellers.

SOURCE: Mercury News reporting