Drawing a Family Tree is difficult

Genealogy is a fascinating hobby not only available to the upper classes. Through Internet Archive and Google Search it is fairly easy to contact distant relatives. A few blogs discuss genealogy, such as Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter.

But how to draw a family tree? Bottom-Top starting with me and listing my ancestors? Or Top-Bottom starting with one of my ancestors and listing all his offspring? In the first case, I get a complete lists of all people whose genes I have in my body, in the second case I get a list of people who share some of my genes. In the first case, the siblings of my ancestors are ignored, in the second case the parents and siblings of the partners of offspring.

Family Trees with Web 1.0

Several programs allow creating famility trees (such as Wingeno). With these programs it is possible to visualize family trees from different perspectives. The problem is: somewhere you have to save the file with all connections and only one person can edit the file. With this method, Family Trees develop isolated from each other.

Family Tree are compact social networks: Each relation can be generated via the Parent-Child-Relationship because most peopke have only one biological father and only one biological mother.

Family Trees are ideal for collaborative work Each family member has a set of local knowledge about their relatives. Together we can create a more comprehensive family tree.

One possibility for cooperation is offered by Wikitree, yet the editing of Wikis seems to be a big hurdle for many: even though Wikitree existed since 2005, only 46.262 profiles have been created.

Other platforms are Ancestry.com (Blog, 5 billion entries), OneGreatFamily.com (see comment), Kinjunction, Genesreunited or Myheritage.com (for a comparison see Wallstreet Journal).

Family Tree Social Networks

David Sacks, former Board Member at Paypal and inventor of geni.com wanted to simplify the creation of family trees by using a visual user interface to “create a family tree of the whole world”. The Social Network allows to inviterelatives by email in order to collaborate on the same family tree. More than 10 million profiles have been created on Geni so far.

Geni also receives good reviews in the blogosphere (see Kevin Lim, MaunTech, Jason Unger, Alexis Brion, Web2.0Directory, Stefani Twyford, Whippleworld, TechcoastReview, PeoplesearchDigest, James Seng or Mark Buzinkay).

Can Geni compete with more established firms which can easily copy its functions but have more profiles available? Geni at the moment is estimated to be worth 100 million US-Dollarsgrowing market.

Geni was adapted by Sven Schmidt with the name verwandt.de (related), but it is also available in English at itsourtree.com. Verwandt grows faster then Geni.

Verwandt has received a good press coverage and blog coverage (Robert Basic, Burkhard Schneider, Mike Lima, Volker Hepp, Mark Buzinkay). Verwandt was participant in the competition for the German Start Up of the Year 2007.

A third network follows a similar path: Kindo.com. Kindo is produced by an international team of young software engineers and webdesigners working in London. Even though it started last, it has made quite a wave in the blogosphere (Mutado, Internet-Business, Digital Passports, Mike Stopforth, Josh Lowensohn, Interment, The OpenPress, Xboxservice, Ruben Colomer, Deutsche Startups, Alexander Trust, Silvio Ströver, Comdao, Mark Buzinkay) and in the press.

Advantages and disadvantes of Geni.com, Verwandt.de und Kindo.com

Creating a family tree is very simple: starting with one person you add parents, siblings, kids or partners (see video-tutorial from Kindo).

Since all three networks were created with Flash, the graphics are quite nice. You click on any person in the network and see their ancestors, siblings and offspring. Further branches of the trees are in the background and can be retrieved through clicking on a person.

Additional information can be saved - marriage-, birth- and death-dates which are shown in a calendar. Address data, Photos and much more can be saved for each person. In these general functions, the three social networks barely differ although it is obvious that Verwandt copied directly from Geni while Kindo changed a few things.

Export, Delete, Change

Geni and Verwandt allow export into a gedcom-file, Kindo doesn’t (yet). Neither of them allow to import Gedcom-Files. Geni plans to release a Share-Version for your own website, Facebook or Myspace.

None of the three social networks allow to merge existing familiy treems, but Geni thinks about it.

You cannot delete people which you have invited via email. Also Persons can only be deleted if they are not a knot in the network, in other words if they have only one contact. If you have more than two contacts, first your contacts have to be deleted. The aim is to keep the network intact, but at the same time small mistakes can have a big impact.

Data Security

Everyone working on a family tree can edit and delete profiles - theoretically the whole family tree. The management of editing rights is not satisfactory solved in all three networks.

Another questions remains as well: what happens with the data? Family data is valuable and users should be aware that nothing can prevent the owners of these networks to sell the complete data set - even if they claim that they have no intention to do so.

Circles and Single Parents

Verwandt assigns people to each other without being asked to because it does not consider single parents. At Geni or Kindo Single Parents” are possible.

Complex family relationships are not mapable in Verwandt. Notwithstanding Inbreeding of the Royal Nobility, it is possible to create very simple cases for instance when two sisters marry two brothers. At Geni it is possible to create “Family Cycles”.

Communication and Performance

All three companies have corporate blogs to be in touch with their users. Geni has a forum to discuss errors and bugs. The support of all three companies is quick and effective.

Verwandt and kindo are sometimes a little bit slow - this creates errors. Geni is often faster and has less bugs.

Summary

If you don’t mind English, then use Geni. If you need a German network, then with Verwandt and Kindo you will have platforms which are to some extent sufficient but still have some drawbacks.

A German Version of this Article can be found here