The Geni Blog

October's Most Popular Profiles

The list of the most popular Geni profiles for the month of October is now available. The top ten includes the current US President, a former US President, a Queen, five celebrities, and two Biblical figures. Can you guess who they are from their profile photos?

View any of these profiles to see if you're related. And don't forget you can use the "Send this profile" link to post interesting profiles to Facebook, Twitter, or dozens of other services.

View October's 100 popular profiles

Geni is an Adobe MAX 2009 finalist!

We're proud to announce that Geni has been selected by Adobe as a 2009 MAX Awards finalist in the Social Computing category. The annual Adobe MAX Awards is a global awards program that recognizes the best uses of Adobe software for creating engaging experiences.

Winners will be selected via online voting from September 28, 2009 to October 6, 2009, so use the link below to cast your vote.

Read more about the awards and cast your vote

(if you just want to go straight to the "vote for Geni" page you can find it here)

Geni.com Creates First Genealogy Knol

Google has recently created a way for people to write and publish articles, which they call Knols. The Knol project is a site that hosts many knols — units of knowledge — written about various subjects. The authors of the knols can take credit for their writing, provide credentials, and elicit peer reviews and comments. Users can provide feedback, comments, related information. So the Knol project is a platform for sharing information, with multiple cues that help you evaluate the quality and veracity of information.

At Geni, we are constantly reading Genealogy related blogs and articles in attempt to stay up to date with the latest genealogy news and requests so that we can improve our product by offering the tools that people need to conduct and share genealogy research. Last week we came across this blog which pointed out the fact that nobody had yet created a Genealogy Knol. Therefore, we decided that since genealogy is the third most popular hobby in the world we should create one. You can read the Genealogy Knol we created here.

If you like the Knol be sure to leave a 5 star rating and a positive comment or review. Also, if you feel that the Knol is missing a certain component feel free to make changes.

What's Your Favorite New Feature on Geni?

We recently released a number of new features and we are interested in what you think of them. Let us know by taking our new poll.

Time Magazine 50 best websites - Vote for Geni!

Time Magazine has named Geni one of the top 50 websites of 2008! Here is what they say about Geni:

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: the free site gives you the basic tools for diagramming your ancestry, and it also lets you invite others to contribute. If you're serious about tracing your lineage, you'll probably still click on stalwarts like Ancestry.com, Family Search and the USGenWeb Project for their vast digital archives, but Geni makes it easier — and more fun — than ever to create and share your family tree.

They are asking users to select and rate their favorite websites from this list. You can rate Geni on this page. Use the rating slider to rate Geni on a scale of 1 to 100, then click submit.

There are a lot of other great sites in the top 50, so make sure you browse around after you vote for Geni.

Vote for Geni Now

Schools Embrace Geni as Fun and Interactive Learning Environment

As Geni continues to add additional features, teachers are discovering that Geni is a great tool for students to learn more about themselves and their family through a fun and interactive medium. Sally Goerner, a sixth grade language arts teacher in Longmont, Colorado, describes her experience and those of her students while using Geni.

Our sixth grade students are working on a memoir project called, “Writing Your Life.” There are many options available to students for what and how to write about the important events in their lives. One of the ways we want them to express their lives is by looking at where they came from. Geni.com seemed to be the ideal way for the students to build and examine their family tree.

We started them in the computer lab at school, just filling in the basics of themselves, brothers and sisters, moms and dads, and any other relatives they happened to know. We encouraged them to invite older relatives to their tree to help them fill in the gaps and to add additional family information that they didn’t know themselves.

My own sister got into Geni.com and added tons of our relatives, along with photos, birthdates, etc. I ended up with a whole lot more knowledge about my own family and I could then share this with my students who were especially intrigued by the birthday reminders and ability to share news across the country with relatives they previously didn’t have a lot of personal contact with.

We challenged the students to a little competition to see who could build the largest tree. I was also able to show them how Geni.com could allow for the many fractured and rebuilt families for those of us who have more than one set of parents and siblings who belong to some parents and not to others.

Finally, we partnered up with our fabulous tech lab teachers who agreed to print out the trees in color for students to include in their personal “scrapbook” of their life. This has been a great learning experience for us, the students and their families! We will definitely do this again next year and utilize more of the nuances of this great program.

If you would like to know more about how Geni can help facilitate a similar experience with your children or students feel free to contact us at a schools@geni.com

Follow us on Twitter

We are now using twitter as another avenue to keep our community informed. If you would like to follow us on twitter our user name is Geni.

2008 Webware 100 Awards - Vote for Geni!

We are proud to announce that Geni has once again been selected as a finalist in the 2008 Webware 100 Awards by the editors of CNET Webware.com. Last year we won the award in the Reference category. This year we have been upgraded - we were chosen from more than 4,600 user-submitted nominations as a finalist in the Social category. The winners in each category are selected by popular vote.

Here is the official announcement of the 2008 Awards:

It worked before, so we're doing it again: Today Webware is launching its second Webware 100 Awards, honoring the people's choice for the best Web 2.0 apps and services.

In our 2007 awards, more than half a million votes were cast to determine the most the popular Web apps. This time, with more apps available and even people using Web 2.0 apps, the contest should be even more intense.

Show your love by Voting for Geni now!

Happy Birthday Geni!

One year ago today Geni.com was launched to the public. The entire Geni Team would like to thank all of our users for a tremendous year - your feedback has been vital in helping us develop Geni into the product it is today. In one year Geni has grown from an easy to build family tree to the best way to find and stay in touch with your family online.

What better way to reflect on our first year than with the new Geni Timeline feature. Here is a brief overview of the last 12 months. We expect much more in the next 12 months, so... stay tuned!

Timeline Showing 18 Events 2007 JAN 16 Birth of Geni 2007 MAR 13 Geni User Forum launched 2007 MAR 20 GEDCOM Export alpha release 2007 APR 2 New Feature: Birthday Reminders 2007 APR 25 New Features: Photo Albums and Tagging 2007 MAY 16 New Features: Calendar, Map and Friends 2007 JUN 18 Geni wins Webware 100 award! 2007 JUN 21 New Feature: Geni Inbox 2007 JUN 23 Search Outside Your Tree 2007 JUL 2 Geni reaches 5 Million Profiles 5 Million People 2007 JUL 19 New Feature: Family Group 2007 AUG 3 New Feature: Tree Preferences 2007 AUG 16 Geni User Wiki launched 2007 OCT 31 Geni reaches 10 Million Profiles 10 Million people 2007 NOV 10 New Features: Photo Organizer, Enhanced Privacy Controls, Directory of Family Names 2007 DEC 21 Geni is a 2007 Crunchies Finalist 2008 JAN 3 New Features: Family News, Timeline and Events, Shared Tree 2008 JAN 16 Happy Birthday Geni!

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Vote for Geni in the 2007 Crunchies

Thanks to all of our users who nominated us, Geni is a 2007 Crunchies finalist in the 'Best user-generated content site' category!

You can vote once a day until voting ends at midnight pst Thursday, January 10 using this link.