Precious Memories Captured Thanks to Likebook + Giveaway

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I was browsing Facebook and an ad popped up among my wall posts. Usually I pay no attention to them but this time it caught my eye. It was for a product called Likebook. In this moment I realized I could capture lost memories.

Likebook is an online service that, with your permission, gathers your Facebook posts, likes, statuses, comments and pictures and creates a beautiful book for you. I caught my breath for a moment. I’ve forgotten so much of the time when I was pregnant with my triplets through the time that they were born and died. Not only did I share some of the most spectacular news of our life in that social media outlet, I shared some of the most devastating. We were circled in support and prayer in that space as well. I shared prayer requests and updates on our health and wellbeing and in response people sent their love through posts and comments. When I was stuck on bed rest this was a critical lifeline to the outside world and a way for us to quickly communicate updates. In fact – most of the world found out that our angels went to Heaven through a Facebook post.I received my book a few weeks ago for review and I’ve been reading through it when I’m able. My heart is continually uplifted and broken at once as I read through the prayers and support that fill those pages from our friends and family. I’m able to see all of my ultrasounds and the family pictures when I’m still pregnant. I’m able to capture the times after the funeral when I was living on auto-pilot and just surviving. Did I really make a snowman? What did we do for Easter? It’s all there. Memories. Moments. Joy and tears mingled on the page.The online interface is fairly easy to use. Granted I work on a computer every day so I flipped through it all quickly but I think even the most basic computer newbie could figure it out. They have a few variables to control for the cover. They automatically insert your current cover/profile picture but you can change that if you want to. Since I was going back to well over a year ago I was glad to have this control. You can also choose from several different layout styles and color options. They show you a 3D version so you can view the spine as well!

You also have options to scale the size of your book by selecting the dates, photo albums and posts to include. I had to play around with this for quite some time to get mine under the page limit. (I was pretty excited when I saw 333 pages, “Hi Mommy!”) You can add photo albums as you chose and can include them within the pages as they appear in time or have them added at the end of the book. You can even go in and deselect specific posts if you want to (although I found it easier to do that in Facebook so I could see the full post. Yes… this was time consuming but worth it).

You can chose either hardcover (more expensive but of course more durable) or softcover (less expensive). In my case I nearly maxed out the pages and I found the softcover the more affordable option as well as very easy to read and flip pages.

I love all of the photo collage spreads. They take the most liked pictures and create a double-page spread with them. Of course photos are spread throughout the pages and include the comments that friends make which is fun to go back and read. The only frustrating part of the automated layout is the text columns. They have a single and double-column layout on each page and it can be confusing reading. The single columns jump from one page to the next or sometimes to the next page instead of reading from column to column like a typical book. I have a lot of heavily commented posts on some pages and I think that adds to some of the confusion.

I only have one other complaint for Likebook. When I was initially creating my book I had a glitch. A photo I took of my daughter at the zoo the week prior kept appearing in my book preview. Remember my book is supposed to be a collection of images from well over a year ago. Not only does this photo not belong in this book, it was appearing EVERYWHERE. I marked a red X on all of the pages it appeared in my book preview. Thankfully I wrote to Likebook customer support and they walked me through some options to fix the mistake. The solution was emptying my cache (circled in green below). I was thankful to have had that book preview option to catch the mistake and to confirm it was fixed.