Friday, April 25, 2008

Survey from WorldVitalRecords about Social Networking

I received an invitation to participate in a survey about naming a social networking site sponsored by WorldVitalRecords.com. Of course, they presently have FamilyLink.com as their social networking site. I like that name and I think that it denotes their purpose.

Here is the survey, and my responses:

1) We are developing a service that will make it easier to find and stay in touch with your relatives. This service will allow you to share family news, photos, audio and video clips, and family history documents with each other. Which domain name do you feel best describes such a service?
* FamilyFeed.com
* FamilyLink.com
* WereRelated.com - I picked this one.
* FamilyRecords.com
* Relativity.com
* MyPeople.com
* FamilyStream.com
* FamilyUpdate.com
* OurHistories.org


2) Why did you select WereRelated.com?

* It sounds personal and connected.
* It conveys the purpose of the intention of the web site.


3) What is your second choice?

I picked MyPeople.com


4) What type of content are you most interested in seeing from your close (immediate) family?
* family photos - my pick
* family news or blogs
* video clips or audio clips
* what my relatives are doing right now
* new family history discoveries about my ancestors
* family tree updates
* other

5) What type of content are you interested in seeing from your extended family? (same choices as #4)
* family news or blogs
- my pick

6) How often would you check a web site that contained the latest photos uploaded by your relatives, including your children and grandchildren?
* as often as it is updated
* several times a day
* daily
* several times a week - my pick
* weekly
* don't know
* not interested

7) How interested are you in finding people you are related to that you didn't know about?
* Not interested
* Somewhat Interested
* Interested
* Very Interested
* Extremely Interested -
my pick

I really like their choice of web site names - there are some good ones there.

I see two problems with any social networking site that is just starting up now:

1) There is a lot of competition - I listed many of them several weeks ago, and many of them are not growing or thriving. The ones that have a significant market share are going to try to improve their service and market share by trying to keep their loyal members. The ones that might suffer having customers picked off are the ones that charge a fee.

2) Family social networking on the computer is not a priority for the vast majority of adults, or genealogists, over age 30. Maybe it will be in the future as today's computer-linked teens and college students grow into adulthood, but for couples with children it is not a priority. My kids share photos with me, and I with them, but they just don't have the time or the interest to spend hours putting photos, news and stories online for the world to see. The people who do have the time or interest to do this are those with an empty nest or grandparents, but in many cases (maybe 80% to 90%?) they do not have the computer skills to do it. So there is a limited market, in my opinion.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Most of the under-30's are not interested in sharing photos or email with cousins on the opposite side of the country. Often they neither like, nor trust, their cousins and would prefer to interact with their school friends, BFFs or whatever. For that, there's already Facebook and Myspace.