Thursday, March 27, 2008

Genealogy Social Networking Sites

Has anyone seen a "complete" list of genealogy social networking sites recently? Kimberly Powell on the About:Genealogy blog has a list (date unknown), and there is a fairly recent list by Rick Crume that appeared in the January 2008 Family Tree Magazine. More social networking sites become available monthly, it seems, and I'm struggling to keep up with them.

Here is a list, in alphabetical order, for the sites I've found so far (Kimberly's plus Rick's plus my own search). Some of these sites are commercial - they require a subscription, but many of them are absolutely free.

* Amiglia - www.amiglia.com

* Ancestry.com Member Trees - www.ancestry.com

* Famillion - www.famillion.com

* Famiva - www.famiva.com

* FamilyLink - www.familylink.com

* Find My Past - www.findmypast.com

* Footnote - www.footnote.com

* Genes Reunited - www.genesreunited.com

* Genetree - www.genetree.com

* Geni - www.geni.com

* Kincafe - www.kincafe.com

* My Trees/Kindred Konnections - www.KindredKonnections.com

* Living Genealogy - www.livinggenealogy.com

* MyFamily - www.myfamily.com

* MyHeritage - www.myheritage.com

* NokTree - www.noktree.com

* Our Story - www.ourstory.com

* Shared Tree - www.sharedtree.com

* Story of My Life - www.storyofmylife.com

* We Relate - www.werelate.org

* Zooof - www.zooof.com

You can read Kimberly's and Rick's articles for details about them, or click on the links and read about them yourself.

The list above does not include Pedigree Databases - Rick Crume has a list of them at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/articles/dec03/pedigree.html.

I have my family trees on Ancestry as a Private Member Tree, FindMyPast, MyHeritage and WeRelate. I receive notices every once in awhile that there is a match with another user on MyHeritage, and almost daily emails from my Ancestry Member Tree asking for more information (because my tree is private, they can't see it, only query me about it).

What other social networking sites for genealogy research should be on this list?

Any opinions on the "best one" to use? What criteria should I use to decide on one to use? Is one site better than another for searching for common ancestors, having a family web site, or posting family photos and stories.

2 comments:

Lori Thornton said...

Social networking sites in general are "exploding." It's very difficult to keep up. In the computer classes that I teach, I have students experiment with some of these. I give them an option for one assignment of several types of social networking sites and give several options in each category. I only had one student take me up on the Genealogy option this time. I think the student chose "We Relate." My list of options just keeps growing and growing, and I'm pretty selective about the ones I put on the list. Looks like my list may grow again!

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