Geni: Family Trees Made Fairly Easy
Normally I turn down invites from new social networks; Bebo? No thanks. LinkedIn? I’m starting to use it less and less. Bandmix? Man, if I could get my ten bucks back, I would. What a stinker that one was.
So, when my wife’s Uncle DeeDee created a profile for me on the genealogy website Geni, I was a little sketched out. Geni is a social network of sorts; it’s a place where families can go and make up their family trees. Since the family tree was already made up (and I was neatly placed in the middle of 463 members), I figured I should do my part and update it. I was really surprised at how simple it was - it took under 10 minutes to update it, and, I’ve got to say, it was a cinch. And it looks pretty good.
Yes, you read that right. It’s not all that tough. In fact, I think it’s the closest my fifty-something mom and fifty-something uncle have come to social networking. My mom has spent at least three or four hours on the site, making trees, updating profiles, and inviting relatives. I noticed that a great-uncle of mine was missing, so I added him to the tree in about 15 seconds.
That’s the thing with Geni:it all starts with one person. My uncle DeeDee invited my wife, who, in turn, invited my mom and I. Two months and 463 relatives later, and this is starting to look pretty cool, and pretty coherent.
My mom has always had a yen for genealogy - one of her cousins wrote a incredibly thorough book about 22 years ago tracing our ancestry back to a small Russian village in the 1880s. I think it’s pretty cool that this site gives her the ability to put it all in a coherent format (and one that’s easy to email or print out for non computer-savvy folks).
Cool features include the Family Birthdays feature (it sort of looks like the Facebook birthdays feature) and the privacy feature, which, in some senses, mimics the privacy settings of more sophisticated social networks, in that it allows “layers” of privacy. For example, you can make it so the public, searching the Geni site, can see your name and location, but not your photo. It even has a “hide age” feature.
The key (obvious) disadvantage of Geni is that the deceased cannot update their own profiles, and even though Geni seems to be based around the family tree, once you drill down, it all comes down to the profile. There’s also a slightly disconcerting feature that allows any family member to update any feature of the deceased’s profile (i.e. favorite food, quotes, etc.). While it may be plausible to update a deceased ancestor’s occupation or upload a photo, it seems a bit strange to me that you could, say, denote that your Uncle Schmuel’s favorite food was gribines.
The single biggest concern about Geni is the business model. Although over 10 million profiles exist on the site, the company is not earning revenue at present. About a year ago, they alluded to charging for a premium service. Whatever happens, I hope the data stays put, because my mom will be really ticked off if somebody futzes with her family tree.
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The Geni Team
Posted on February 4th, 2008 at 6:07 pm.
Thanks for writing about Geni in your blog. It’s great to hear about how your family is enjoying and using Geni. We appreciate your feedback on how we can improve your Geni experience. Please note that a deceased person’s profile can be set so that only the person who added him/her to the tree can edit their profile (they can do this at the ‘Settings’ link by selecting ‘Managed Profiles’).
Rest assured, we do not plan on ticking off your mom. :-)
We have some Geni gear we’d like to send your way so please contact us at the email address we’ve provided.