Family Tree Magazine Names Geni to 101 Best Websites

The September 2008 issue of Family Tree Magazine named Geni.com to it's list of 101 Best Websites for 2008.                                                                                           

"An alternative to investing in shrink-wrapped software, Geni was picked by PC Magazine as one of the best free online applications of any kind...You now can export and import GEDCOM files, making it easy to transport data from your desktop program.

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Geni in Time's 50 Best Websites 2008

Time Magazine June 16, 2008

For an exercise that's all about family, researching your genealogy can be an oddly lonesome affair, filled with long hours spent sifting through records and making awkward phone calls to far-flung relatives. But Geni turns tree-building into a collaborative effort.  Read the rest of the article.

2008 Artistry of Genealogy Awards

Business Wire Mar 28, 2008   

The 2008 Artistry of Genealogy Awards (AGA) were announced today by The Photo preservation Center (PPC) to showcase outstanding genealogy websites and recognize excellence in preserving family history through genealogy. Read the rest of the article.

Good UI Design: Make It Easy, Show Me You Care

Read, Write, Web March 26, 2008      

...uses a few examples to make his point: one, Geni an online family tree creation tool lets users make a family tree as soon as they visit the web site. Read the rest of the article.

Sign Up Forms Must Die

A List Apart | For People Who Make Websites March 25, 2008    

We are pleased to present an excerpt from Chapter 13 of Luke Wroblewski’s forthcoming book Web Form Design: Filling In the Blanks (Rosenfeld Media, 2008). — Ed.

I’ll just come out and say this: sign-up forms must die. In the introduction to this book I described the process of stumbling upon or being recommended to a web service. You arrive eager to dive in and start engaging and what’s the first thing that greets you? A form. Read the rest of the article.

Is Shrink Wrapped Software Dead?

Time Magazine March 17, 2008                                    

Learning about your heritage is fun for the whole family on Geni.com, which lets you invite relatives to help flesh out the family tree.  Since all data are stored on Geni's central servers, anyone you've given access to can just add information directly.  Read the rest of the article.

One of the Best Free Sofware Apps

PC Magazine March 2008 Share your genealogy with everyone in the family.  They can contribute more individual profiles until your family tree is complete.

I Dream of Geni

Sarasota Magazine - January 13, 2008

A couple of weeks ago my cousin Andrew from Atlanta e-mailed me an invite from a Web site service called Geni. The invitation asked me to register and offered me the opportunity to build out my family tree. Since my family, probably like yours, is scattered literally around the world, I figured this might be a good way to discover the lines that bind us all together.

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All hail to top 10 Web's throne

The Star Ledger - January 1, 2008                        

Geni: Existing Web sites often retooled themselves to add a "social networking" component in 2007, a year notable for the elevation of Facebook to near Google-like stature. With Geni, the Web got an online genealogy spot that's slick, fun and, with its social networking features, makes it easy to connect far-flung family members in collaborative genealogy projects. Click one button and you see your family tree. Click another and you've got your brother-in-law's or your grandmother's.

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Online Sites Offer Peek Into The Past

Forbes.com - December 31, 2007                                                             

One of the earliest "Web 2.0" family tree start-ups is Geni.com, which launched in January 2007 and has since received $11.5 million in venture capital (valuing the company at $100 million) and attracted nearly 1 million registered users. The company's founder, former PayPal chief operating officer David Sacks, wants his site to be useful throughout the year as family members mark birthdays, anniversaries and other life events. But like all social networks, Sacks' challenge is recruiting more members to join, and getting them to return.

Though nearly 1 million Geni members have created more than 10 million "profiles" of relations in their family trees on the site--not all of those people are interested in joining up. Many of them aren't alive, they're merely extensions of a living member's tree. For living relatives, then, the key is to invite them to join the site via an introductory e-mail that offers to show off a relative's tree.

"We have a good response rate to those invitations," says Sacks. "A much higher percentage actually join than other social networks. It’s a draw because not everyone wants to make a tree, but everyone wants to look at what their relatives have done."

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