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At a certain point in their lives, many people start to become interested in their family tree — who their great-great-grandfather was, whether they're related to the Royal Family, and so on. In other words, their genealogy. There have been websites that cater to this interest for some time now. In fact, the company behind Ancestry.com (Generations Networks) has been around for more than a decade. So is there anything new to be done online when it comes to genealogy and family trees?
A company called Geni.com thinks that there is. It recently launched what you might call a "Web 2.0" genealogy site. The difference becomes obvious as soon as you go to the home page. Most traditional websites such as MyFamily.com and Ancestry.com (both owned by Generations Networks) give you a regular-looking page after you type in a relative's family name, with various links to resources — such as the U.S. Census going back to the early 1900s, birth and death records, etc. Most of those sites also charge a monthly fee of up to $15 a month to use.
At Geni.com, however — which is free — you type in your name and you get a single box (blue if you are male, pink if you are female), with arrows on all four sides. When you click on one of the arrows, you can add the names of sisters, brothers, father and mother, etc. in their own individual box. Each one has a small square for a photo you can upload, and a box where you can type in the person's email address. You can also check a box to categorize the person as deceased (or divorced).
Once those other boxes are filled in, you can add relatives to them by clicking on their arrows, and so on. Within minutes, you have a graphical representation of your family tree, with lines connecting the different members, and clicking on each one gets you their family tree. And if you type a person's email address into the box provided, Geni.com will email them and tell them that they have been added (be forewarned, however, that some family members may see this kind of automated response as spam, so it's wise to either inform them in advance or send them a more personal email yourself with a link to the site).
If you click on a person's name in their pink or blue box, you get sent to a profile page where you can enter personal details, including phone numbers, email addresses, and a brief history. There's also a box where family members can type in memories of the person, and the profile shows you their direct relatives, with photos and links to their "trees." When looking at the tree view, there's a slider over to one side that allows you to zoom in or out on your tree, and there are navigation arrows — although you can also click and drag the page, in the same way that you do with a site like Google Maps.
The combination of these different features makes Geni a lot easier to use than most other genealogy sites, and a lot more appealing to look at as well. There are some other sites that are trying new things as well, including MyHeritage.com — which has facial-recognition software that it says will recognize people in your photos (once you identify them) and group them together for you — but for the most part they require you to type in names and then look at lists, or download a tree-building program and then upload the information.
Some users have expressed concerns about how much information can be entered into the profiles on Geni.com, information that includes many of the details an "identity thief" would require to duplicate a person's history or get access to secret bank passwords (mother's maiden name, etc.). But the company says only invited family members or friends can see those details, and therefore it is up to the user to determine who gets access to them.
Geni.com is one of a growing number of companies that were started by former PayPal executives, including YouTube (started by former PayPal staffers Chad Hurley and Steve Chen). The genealogy site was founded by PayPal's former chief operating officer, David Sacks, with financing from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. Mr. Sacks has also been a movie producer, putting up most of the money to make a well-received Hollywood film called Thank You For Smoking.
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