• by JPHuber , October 4, 2011

I've always thought of myself as a storyteller instead of a writer.

I love telling the story about how I was at Clay Bucholz's no-hitter or the funny old man that copied my movements at the grocery store.

I like to tell stories all the time through pictures, video, and obviously through my writing.

It's been fascinating throughout the evolution of social media and Facebook. People started out thinking it was kind of a cool thing and today major corporations breakdown every single one of their movements on the site.

But while my photography style and advancement has certainly changed, the fact that I like to tell stories on social media is the same.

During a summer trip to a lake house in Michigan, I uploaded the pictures to my computer and was immediately taken back to Fennville.

The first sunset of when we were there. The bags games where I was winner of only one. The happiest I've seen my family in a while. The romantic picture that quickly became the favorite I'd ever taken.

But I realized when I was sitting there sorting through the pictures, that even before the captions were placed on each photo, there was a fully developed story there.

I share my photos with friends via Facebook because I've never actually made the move to Flickr like a normal photographer, and before I posted those captions, I wanted to let the pictures sit and speak for themselves.

The response was awesome. My friends just got "it". There were "likes" and comments, and wall posts followed.

But the best part about all of it was that someone told me that "they felt like they were there".

That's the best feeling a storyteller can have when they're showing their tales, and that's really what social media has become for a lot of us.

When I look at fellow creatives and their online profiles, they try to tell us a story about themselves through their information given or a profile picture.

I've even been posting almost strictly about the Miley Cyrus song "Party in the USA" or integrating into other events going on, not just because it's hilarious (really it is, I promise), but also because it's helping my build a ridiculous theme for that particular profile.

That theme is helping tell my story about how I like to have fun. It gives the friends I haven't talked to in 3 years something to say to me if they see me again. That ever-awkward ice-breaker is available to them now.

On Twitter, I'm much more engaged with my followers, and while many of the tweets seem as though they're singular events, they all help tell the story of me.

If you follow me, you'll see that I'm a sports fan, comedy junkie, PR nerd, coffee freak, and friendly person.

The story I tell there is one of passion and interactivity. I try to express exactly what I'm feeling at that moment.

It's almost like viewing a realtime portal into my thoughts and feelings.

While many people may think that social media is just something we use to pretend we're still friends with someone from eighth grade, there are many more of us that are trying to tell the world a little story we think is pretty damn important.

The story of ourselves.