Making Connections

Genealogy remains one of the more popular pastimes in modern culture. Embracing Web2.0 Ajax comes Geni.com, which is quite viral. It offers a very easy guided data entry process geared towards encouraging contact with relatives to have them fill in their own information and gradually flesh out a very comprehensive tree. Its extremely fun to play with which is enhanced by the immediate feedback that you get seeing the tree evolve. Its quite intuitive to use. I may actually share it with a couple relatives and see how well the collaborative effort works.
The bigger issue however, is that it will remain geared at small scale data acquisition lacking GED import export which even the most amateur genealogist is quite familiar with. Moreover, it doesn’t attempt to make any connections to other possible relations entering information in the wider world. You can search for individuals, but only within your own tree. You can invite relatives to add to your (their) tree, but if they are off on their own doing it already, they don’t appear as if by magic…wouldn’t that be very cool? This really hampers the application and usability, rendering this more of a game than anything else. With the data locked in, it severely limits how much effort one would really want to throw at it, knowing that that data cannot be re-purposed or manipulated without having functionality added by the authors.
It remain an absolutely natural and well-implemented web2.0 application…one that certainly delivers a tantalizing glimpse of what an online genealogy application using today’s technology has the potential to be.