Genealogy As Social Networking

Geni.com: Genealogy meets social networking meets wikis would be an even more apt description.

I just ran across Geni, a site that facilitates the gathering of family information using the  techniques honed by social media applications like MySpace, Friendster, and LinkedIn. It combines effective networking with a very, very powerful database and killer use of the programming language Ajax (that allows people to edit elements of websites by clicking on different parts of the screen). The genius of this site is that it is incredibly quick for a visitor to jot down what he does know about his family and to leave it until later for himself or other family members to fill in the details. Geni even skips the account creation step by automatically assigning a password as soon as a visitor begins editing. Editing is collaborative (my brother might correct the date I listed as my parents' anniversary) like a wiki. Within 24 hours of joining, I--and the small number of relatives whose emails I have handy--have populated over 60 family members with next to no real effort.

This company has a fair bit of buzz and while I have yet to poke around much in the clippings, see:

• Geni.com’s approach to social networking (Bambi Francisco)
• Different Approaches to the Semantic Web, by Tim O'Reilly
• $100 Million Valuation For Geni (TechCruch, March 5, 2007)