Geni founder David Sacks has said all along that he wants to create a single family tree for the whole world. Based on some usage stats the company will announce on Thursday, they’re moving towards that goal: over a million unique visitors in August (growth has been steady).
And the biggest family tree at Geni now has over 680,000 profiles and 40,000 users (profiles include deceased family members).
A key feature driving big trees is the ability to merge smaller ones, which can create a snowball effect. Prior to the release of the merge feature, Geni’s largest tree was just 35,000 profiles.
Geni now allows users to upload photos and videos, arrange family calendars, etc. As we said over a year ago, the site is clearly aiming to be the family-centered social network:
Geni won’t be successful if all they can do is get people to add themselves and a couple of relatives and then rarely revisit the site. They want viral growth and the kind of big page view numbers that the large social networks see – up to 20 per day per visitor. To get there they’re adding a few proven features to the site. And by adding these features, they are essentially creating a social network with the family, as well as family friends, as the core. There’s a direct analogy to facebook – instead of colleges and universities, Geni is focusing on family units.
Does anyone even like their family?
Good one!
lol – agree.
that’s a good point actually.
when you get older you forget how much they suck and start getting scared of dying alone
You stop this!!! (-:
I can actually see this working, if they can make it much easier to research one’s genealogy by leveraging the social networking aspect of it all
I like Geni. One of my goals was to create a family tree, but I was too lazy. Within a couple months I grew my family tree on Geni and learned my genealogy and learned about new cousins and aunts and uncles. It also informs me of birthdays and anniversaries. I’m a big fan.
i like the interface. very intuitive.
started my own family tree a couple of years ago but got stuck (in the 1800’s).
I’m from germany so let’s see if it’s going to work globally (localization, geni??)
Geni: The social network for dead people.
Now that you put it that way… yes it is
Allan, do you work for Geni or have any financial relationship to Geni? Your reply was almost too perfect and for some reason triggered my b.s. radar.
…ding ding ding – we have a winner
I’m definitely in the “visit once or twice, never go back category”. For a few days it was fascinating to watch the tree grow, but it must be at least a year since I visited the site.
Obviously their user growth means I’m in a minority, but family-based social networks just seem like one of those things that make so much sense in principle but are so limited in their appeal in practice.
I can see the potential for having a huge world family tree archive on just one site. For exampe, for genetic engineering firms. Which makes me wonder: what happens when Geni is no longer about having family fun, but being a part from a bigger initiative which may have a market value of its own?
Perhaps I’m being too paranoid here, but if you have read their privacy policy, you can only request that your information is removed from their web site. Not from their archives. Am I the only one to find it that slightly scary?
Geni has one fatal flaw: it doesn’t let family members edit other family profiles after they have been “claimed”. With so much ““visit once, never go back” activity, trees die out very quickly.
This is why people claim their profiles, to edit it themselves. Why would you still want to mess with it? You should’ve told them not to claim it if they would like you to update it. It’s not a wiki…
I thought the comment was clear but perhaps not. Because Geni restricts profile editing, trees die out. If Geni allowed family members to continue editing family profiles by default, trees would remain vibrant. Your comparison to wiki is actually a good one. The concept would work much better with less restrictive editing policies.
Geni rocks. It keeps my family close but not THAT close. Geni is a great way to post videos and photos for immediate and extended family – basically the people who will come to your funeral. Yeah Facebook for dead people so what – how do you want to be remembered? For spanking and buying friends or spreading your legacy?
Good find on the privacy policy.
I think #1 feature request must be Localization for Geni to growth worldwide.
See the bigger picture of Ancestral History here: Geneaolgy’s Big Picture
http://familyfo...9s-big-picture/
Sure Geni is great, it’s really helped me get *other people* to build my family tree.
Is this the same Geni that’s an advertiser on the right? If so, where’s the disclosure?
“Geni [...] said all along that he wants to create a single family tree for the whole world. ”
Good idea except that is not far away from Facebook’s goal to make the social map of the world. There are already genealogy apps on Facebook. A good one is probably lacking. I guess Geni plans to connect to Facebook like twitter or Flixster did. Anyway it is their only way to reach their goal.
btw, excellent contextual use of alias here.
seriously: clap, clap, clap.
My family uses it and it’s amazing to see the non-internet savvy people using it weekly. They post on birthdays and update their profiles. It is nice to get the email on birthdays for your entire family. If it was 40,000 deep I don’t think I would want a birthday email for each person.
I’m a fan. Connected with a bunch of relatives that I haven’t seen in awhile.
I think Geni might do better allowing access to public record without requiring a login. I understand the drive to add subscribers, because Web 2.0 value IS the subscribers, but having to subscribe just to search results is a barrier.
Undo! Undo! I just found the Family Name Directory, without logging in. Sorry. Carry on…
I use http://www.hellotree.com which is very similar to Geni but I like Hellotree simplicity and interface better. Will be interesting to see if this space is big enough for two players.
Uhm, who copied whose tree interface??? They are identical.
I have created Geni but I dont think.. its good but not to the extent that I will spend 20 minutes daily… I visit once few weeks or months coz once you have your family uploaded, I didnt find anything much interesting… coz i cannot see the Geni tree of Pamela Anderson
@john Zsabo – there are already way more than two players in this space.
– ancestry.com (by far the biggest tree mapping, just not the same utility as geni)
– ItsOurTree
– myheritage
-onegreatfamily/familytree.com
-others
Once MyFamily and Ancestry figure out how to lock their users and apps together I think they will own this market. The problem is that they haven’t figured it out yet [and may never.]
Don’t forget the cult favorite http://www.tribalpages.com Its got one of the simplest user interfaces and has powerful features for the serious genealogist. I think Ancestry is going to go under very soon the way they are burning through their venture funds.
If you’re adopted, forget it. I am (twice, yeah, I’m weird – 3 fathers and 2 mothers), IO guess they will get around to accommodating that quark of mine, but in the mean time, um……..
“It’s a small world after all” just like Disney said!
http://www.npr....&m=15401057
kP, can’t you just have 2 or 3 profiles?
Geni is nice, but looks too much like a Facebook clone. They copied the colors, the profile layout, and everything except the tree editor right from Facebook. I like MyHeritage better, but there are other sites out there that provide the same service, worth checking out.
http://trends.g...=all&sort=0
found this interesting trend, it does indicate some of the success Geni has achieved in the past year.
CHeck your facts!!
“Prior to the release of the merge feature, Geni’s largest tree was just 35,000 profiles. ”
Impossible. Their maximum import is 15,000.
Seems like they like to mislead their audience and the media…. how and when will they ever make the venture capital money back they are burning through??
Oh, and not to mention make money from their web 2.0 site.
I think this is a great site and have been able to get my family members really interested in it and they have been adding family and pictures every day
Geni obviously has nice features. I also have built a similar site, only it is more private and less genealogy-related. (www.familyden.com) The one big tree concept really is fun to think about.
What is the point with using a genealogy site that only let you see up to your third cousins? Geni uses “everyone’s related” in their logo, however they will not let you know how, so it’s pretty misleading. .
Geni is the worst offender of all the Genealogy sites when it comes to security, they have so many security bugs that easily allows unauthorised access to private data.
If you register your relatives email, you can expect Geni to target these registered emails with excessive spam. You relatives will not thank you for adding them to Geni, but curse you for the 3 mails-a-day from Geni.
Geni has aggressively pushed features such as “virtual gifts” in order to cash in on users. You can expect them to exploit any opportunity to cash in on any of your relatives no matter age in the near future.
Geni is a hungry moneytrap for your family and I would definitely not recommend anyone using it. Just read their user forum and see how much criticism they get.
They should change their logo to “Geni – everyone’s retarded” since that is how they treat their userbase,
Big Picture Story (on Genealogy) on the “Family Forest Project®” from the Big Island of Hawaii:
http://familyfo...the-big-island/
This is a story on how this company is connecting the dots to recorded history:
http://www.familyforest.com
A People-Centered Approach To History®