Going down the family way
While most social networking websites look at themselves as a forum to create friends, Geni is taking the genealogy route to social networking. With an extremely simple Flash based interface, Geni allows you to invite and add members to your family tree and create a network in the process. Where Geni differentiates itself from most other genealogy websites is that it now allows members to send cards, put up photos and videos and write free profiles laying the seeds for a network. For instance, I got a message from them recently informing me that my cousin’s birthday was coming up, with the option to send her a card.
I would tend to think however that going down the family way, would (a) increase the need for privacy, and (b) limit the repeat traffc, which is what keeps other social networks like Facebook going. Given the increasing tendency towards nuclear families, even in countries like India, would imply weaker family ties and stronger ties built around friends. While this would also create a need to discover one’s family tree, and hence bring people to the website, I wonder if it would be able to go down the route of your typical social network.
However, it probably opens the door for other sources of revenue such as Targeted advertising, Subscriptions (Ancestry.com for instance has 800,000 paying subscribers and 14 million registered users), Comprehensive genealogy services to help you track down your roots, Services such as printing photos, printed versions of the family tree, etc., Product sales built around events related to relatives - weddings, birthdays, etc., Localised services, etc.
GenI is facing some issues pertaining to their privacy policies, but given that since its launch on January 16, 2007, the site has already attracted approximately 500,000 users, it looks like its viral tactics is working.
Other genealogy websites include: Ancestry.com, Onegreatfamily.com, Genealogy.com, Myfamily.com, the soon to be launched Family Pulse, etc.
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Filed under: Digital culture, Ideas & Innovations