When I joined Geni about 18 months ago all features were free. You could see how you were connected to anyone no matter how far back or remotely connected it might be. This was a huge selling point for those really interested in genealogy. You could make your tree as big as you wanted, add photos and video, plus work collaboratively with other family members simultaneously on your tree. Geni provided other social networking pieces as well to keep the family working together and having fun doing it.

During this start-up period up to maybe 6 months or so ago large trees were being built, an earlier post said that largest tree was 35, 0000…way too low a figure. There were trees in the hundreds of thousands. Merging came on-line and now the largest connected tree is nearly 9,000,000 strong. Problem is when merging started fundamental design flaws began to deteriorate service, so Geni has heavily scaled back what users can do and see in their own trees. You can now only really see and receive information on family out to 3rd cousins. That functionality may work for those families who only want the social aspects of the site, but for genealogist this is a deal killer.

Geni in one fell swoop went from being the genealogy software with the most promise and sophistication to rapidly becoming useless. This is so disappointing and upsetting because many if us until these last restrictions, heartily recommended Geni to everyone and now we are embarrassed and apologizing to those we brought on board.

I can only hope Geni regains it focus and reverts to its original mission statement and goals. Of all the products in this market, Geni no doubt HAD the most features and promise of all.

http://www.tamu...rumblings.xhtml

It used to be free but recently changes in Geni shows their hidden commercial agenda. Suddenly they change their “free” features to be “premium” features so you have to pay even to see your own data. Suddenly a lot of limits have been introduced, I guess in order to sell the premium membership. Geni sells this as “privacy improvements”, but it’s actually just a dumbing down of the site.

Who knows what they are going to do ne.xt to make money out of their userbase

You should know better, Noah. My family is limited to 3rd cousins on Geni. Only if I have paid for a “Pro” membership can I even see how I’m related to a 4th cousin, and I’d have to guess that I’m related to them, and push a button before Geni will tell me.

Geni was quite something in the beginning, but you’re downgrading the capabilities one time after another, or you start charging for them, despite your promises to do neither.

Good quality site, could be a good acquisition for someone looking to enter the space or add features.