Waiting on Geni

Jan 18, 2007 Author: Veronica | Filed under: internet

I was excited when I heard about Geni, a new website that helps you map your family tree. According to Techcrunch:

The initial product is a very easy to use Flash tool to create a profile and a family tree - including siblings, spouses, cousins, aunts and uncles, and their families. When you add a relative, there is an option to add their email address and have the tree sent to them as well. They can add their own data, extending the tree, and Geni will launch tools to merge overlapping trees.

Great! Exactly what I’ve been looking for. I didn’t want to pay for a service like Ancestry.com, but at the same time I’ve always wanted to have a web solution for mapping out my family history. One problem - apparently I’ve not only made an account, but someone has added me to their tree:

geni

They were supposed to send my password, but nothing has come to my email address. I know this site is still in beta, but this is day two that I’ve been let down when trying to use the site (yesterday it was down with technical problems.) You would hope that founder David Sacks, with his experience starting PayPal, would know a thing or two about building a stable website.

I don’t know why someone didn’t think of building a “social networking” family tree before. What better way to use that technology than to find out how we’re all interrelated?

UPDATE: Got my password (well, four emails for it, actually) but now the site is having issues again. Maybe tomorrow.

UPDATE:
geni2
Uuuuugh!

13 Responses for "Waiting on Geni"

Dillon K. January 18th, 2007 at 10:54 am 1

I still don’t see why anyone would want to map out their family tree online… What’s the point?
Ben January 18th, 2007 at 12:03 pm 2

you should email them if you havenn’t already because i tried it after reading about it on techcrunch and got my password right away. Arrington is now obsessed with the site
Doug January 18th, 2007 at 1:09 pm 3

An ultra-paranoid look at Geni gives telemarketers all they need to turn a cold “call” into a warm one.
Michael G January 18th, 2007 at 2:46 pm 4

Check their blog, they are slammed with new request and their servers are having a rough time with it.
http://blog.geni.com/
Ben January 18th, 2007 at 3:20 pm 5

you might want to try the forgot you password thing and see if the send you it.
Kevin January 18th, 2007 at 7:44 pm 6

I added like my whole family, but when I added my aunt it said “Click here to see Kim X’s family tree.” and I freaked and a lot of it. For some reason, I’m not comfortable with my family knowing I did this. Not sure why. I think thats the whole point of this site.
eric f. January 19th, 2007 at 8:32 am 7

that’s Awesome. thanks. I’m working on mine now. It would be amazing if this became a commonly used site. I have a whole section of my dad’s family that I never even knew. It would be cool to find them.
CoolB January 19th, 2007 at 9:54 am 8

Thanks for the link V, it’s oddly addicting and hopefully it will work for you soon.
Roddykat January 19th, 2007 at 2:07 pm 9

Interesting, I’ve been curious about the site since I recently read about it. I will probably still check it out. The idea is neat.
Jayesh January 20th, 2007 at 8:22 pm 10

Nice V, i dunno why I would go make a tree..family tree… maybe i am old fashioned anyway did u people see the American idol Episode where the Indian bro and sis are selected man.. strange on anyway we have Indian Idol here in India so guess what if one of them becomes American Idol.. they will indirectly be Indian Idol…LOl! Now …anyway…
any of u Britisher’s there? who see big brother can anyone tell me where i can stream its shows/episodes please
There was this racism stuff that happened with the Bollywood star
Signing of
Jayesh
Mumbai,India
John B. January 20th, 2007 at 10:55 pm 11

I would love to make a family tree, but only two generations back, my family comes from different countries, and the records are very difficult to come by, so I kind of gave up. I guess I wasn’t interested enough? I dunno.
Grant Brunner January 22nd, 2007 at 5:16 am 12

I spent the weekend doing my family tree up to my great grandparents. My mother has a ton of information, all the way back to my great x5 grandparents, but I have little interest in going back that far. There isn’t much information about who those people were personally.

Sure there is stuff like “He was born in Germany in 17xx,” but I find that kind of information to be kind of pointless. What good will that data do me if nobody can even tell me a story about that guy? Cutting it off at my great grandparents makes sense to me because I have an idea of what they were like. I have even met one of my great grandparents, so it is kind of cool to visualize how they are related to me.
leslie March 21st, 2007 at 9:46 pm 13

Read you post on genealogy, we have just launched family based social network- Kincafe. We would like you to particpate in beta release of Kincafe and provide feedback to andy@kincafe.com

Thanks
leslie