Breaking News: MyHeritage has Acquired FamilyLink and WorldVitalRecords

...
I just received word that MyHeritage has acquired FamilyLink, which includes the WorldVitalRecords.com online record collections.

You can see the announcement in the article Social Network For Families MyHeritage Furthers U.S. Presence With Acquisition Of FamilyLink on TechCrunch.

This, of course, raises many questions about the goals of MyHeritage and the future of the FamilyLink personnel and products. 

The article quotes Gilad Japhet, CEO of MyHeritage:

 “We’ll be able to find your mother’s yearbook, your great- grandfather’s will and your ancestor’s immigration record…We’ll do that on a massive, global scale, as we live in a world
that is smaller and more tightly connected than ever before.”

I will probably add some questions and comments to this post as soon as I think this through. 

"FamilyLink is (or soon will be) for genealogists"

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I've been away from the computer for most of the day, so I just read this post by Paul Allen - FamilyLink is (or soon will be) for genealogists on his blog, www.PaulAllen.net.

Paul's post was written, at least partially, in response to my blog post Do I Need FamilyLink Plus? which was pretty critical of the FamilyLink.com social networking site.

I really appreciate Paul understanding my frustration with some of his websites and products - and he's right - I do look at things from a genealogist's point of view. And I sometimes have an "I'll Believe It When I See It" attitude. My use of social networks to communicate with other researchers and family members is frequent, but not in online family trees (mainly because the family isn't really into genealogy, unfortunately!).

I am pleased that Paul wrote that his company will be "for genealogists" in the near future (hope springs eternal here in the Genealogy Cave). I look forward to that, and I think that all genealogy researchers look forward to that because FamilyLink.com has already made, and can make more, significant contributions to the genealogy world.

My thanks to Paul for helping us understand the progress that FamilyLink.com is making and I look forward to reporting about that progress as it happens.

Do I Need FamilyLink Plus?

I was surfing my genealogy family tree sites and clicked on FamilyLink.com, wondering if they've put my family tree data from Facebook on the http://www.familylink.com/ tree yet. Nope.

But a pop-up screen for FamilyLink Plus came up. What's this? They want me to pay for stuff? The rates are $7.95 for a monthly subscription and $4.95 per month for an annual subscription (total of $59.40). I would show a screen shot here, but Blogger won't post it for some unknown reason...

What does a user receive for their money? Information from the FamilyLink Plus page is in purple:

* Advanced Ancestor Searching -- Instantly find your ancestors in 1.5 billion records from more than 12,000 databases. Find tombstone photos and military collections, birth and death records, census and immigration data, digitized books and newspapers, and much, much more (a $99 value by itself!).

This must be a subscription to World Vital Records, right? I'm already a subscriber - do I get to extend my subscription for $59.40 a year? Is this for a US subscription or the World subscription? A current retail cost for a World subscription is $99.95.

* Virtual Gifts & Memorials -- Unlimited access to hundreds of figurines, icons, badges, flowers, flags, and virtual gifts for sharing with relatives and decorating your family tree.

Huh? Why do I want any of this stuff? This is a social networking thing that I have absolutely no time or use for.

* Family Tree Matching -- Our advanced tree matching system will help you find possible living relatives by matching your ancestors with theirs. We will automatically search millions of family trees built by FamilyLink users. Don’t re-invent the wheel. Find and connect with distant relatives that have the family history information you need. (Coming very soon!)

A promise that they will match my family tree data to that of others. Using the family tree that I've patiently input one-by-one - all 8 of them since FamilyLink won't accept a GEDCOM file. Does this mean that they will finally accept a GEDCOM file upload? If so, good. If not, count me out. This family tree matching has been done well by many others - especially Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com, who gladly accept a GEDCOM upload.

* Map My Ancestors -- View where your ancestors lived on an interactive/time shifting online map, and discover famous people and important events that touched the lives of your ancestors. (Coming very soon!)

Another promise. FamilyLink.com still has the http://www.worldhistory.com/ website in beta which does this,. The site even accepts a GEDCOM file upload, but it limits how many localities a user can show for some reason.

If the annual subscription for $59.40 is for a World subscription to World Vital Records, then it's a decent deal to subscribe to FamilyLink Plus. If FamilyLink Plus will permit a GEDCOM upload, then the matching service is useful. If the World History site permits all localities to be shown for the family tree entries, then the FamilyLink Plus site will be useful. But will http://www.worldhistory.com/ be behind the subscription firewall?

I'm a big believer in IBIWISI - I'll Believe It When I See It. FamilyLink.com has promised so much over the past two years and has delivered so little (FamilyHistoryLink, WebTree, We're Related, FamilyLink, world History, GenSeek, GenealogyWise, etc.).

I want them to succeed, because they have really good ideas and I believe that competition is really good for the genealogy world.

For now, I'll pass on the FamilyLink Plus offer. IBIWISI.

Disclosure: I am not an employer, contractor or affiliate of FamilyLink.com. I am a fully paid subscriber to a US subscription for WorldVitalRecords, and do have a small family tree on http://www.familylink.com/, and a large family tree on http://www.worldhistory.com/.

Whither GenSeek.com?

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Remember when the GenSeek.com website was going to be released? The first promised date was late May 2009. Nope. Didn't happen. Then it was promised for Fall 2009. Nope, didn't happen.

The site was supposed to be the second coming of the LDS Family History Library Catalog (FHLC), with

* the content of the current FHLC with links to digitized genealogy resources
* content from other repositories and websites
* links to genealogy books or databases available online

In July 2009, they said that it would be the "window to the vast collection of genealogical resources."

In August 2009, the GenSeek Application on Facebook debuted and the Facebook page said it would have "Research tools for every genealogist. GenSeek on Facebook houses a unique method of searching for sources that may contain records of your ancestors that may be housed in the Family History Library."

There has been precious little added to either the GenSeek.com website or the GenSeek Application for Facebook since then.

When will http://www.genseek.com/ come alive? This screen has shown on the site since early in 2009.





I have received no emails about GenSeek launch! Have you?

The Genseek Application page on Facebook looks like this:




There hasn't been a specific post about the GenSeek application on their Facebook page since 14 August 2009 - the only one to date.

When I click on the GenSeek Application link, I see my GenSeek profile on this screen:




And when I click on the "Search" tab on the application I see:

That is exactly what we saw back in August 2009 - six months ago. And the current application works exactly the same as it did in August 2009. Nothing has changed -- especially the silence from FamilyLink.com about GenSeek.

Here is the list of my Genea-Musing blog posts concerning GenSeek.com (working backwards in time):

* Trying to use GenSeek Application dated 30 September 2009
* GenSeek on Facebook Application is Available dated 10 August 2009
* GenSeekers Announced and GenSeek.com Delayed dated 13 July 2009

* When will GenSeek.com be unveiled? dated 7 May 2009

* Lifting the Skirt on Genseek.com, dated 15 March 2009.

* A Sneak Peek at GenSeek.com, dated 2 February 2009

* What Will GenSeek Be? dated 22 January 2009

Since the first announcement of Genseek.com in January 2009, only Tamura Jones and myself have posted any significant detail of what Genseek.com might look like and how it will work. Other genea-bloggers have been either silent or oblivious to the absence of what's been billed as the next great thing in online genealogy research. Maybe they're more cynical and realistic than I am?

Some persons have mentioned the dreaded "V word" - Vaporware. Technically, it's not - there is the GenSeek application for Facebook that "works."

Will the actual GenSeek.com website look and work like the current GenSeek Application on Facebook? I sincerely hope not - the complaints I had back in September included:

* The listing of resources for a specific topic is haphazard - there are no orderly categories like on the current Family History Library Catalog.

* The information for a specific resource does not include FHLC microfilm or microfiche numbers for the items that are on those media. This makes the site pretty useless for many researchers, at least until all of the microfilms and microfiches have been digitized and indexed by FamilySearch.

* Printing the GenSeek item on the Facebook application is not paper or format efficient. The useful information is in a narrow column that prints on too many sheets of paper.

One more thing - did the Genseekers ever form up and march out to gather genealogy information for imaging and database digitization? That was announced in July 2009 as I recall.

I know what some readers are saying - have patience. I'm trying... major FAIL!

My opinion is that companies should not promise what they cannot deliver, and when they do promise and fail to deliver, that they should own up to it, state a reason and describe the measures being taken to be successful.

I want GenSeek.com to be the most useful genealogy resource catalog since, well, the FHLC. High expectations and patience don't wear well, it seems.

The way things usually work out is that I rant about something today and it is scheduled to launch in the very near future. I hope GenSeek.com does! We all need what it promises to do.

Five Fascinating Interviews

Do you want a "behind the scenes" look at the CEOs of five well known genealogy companies - their careers, their companies, their futures? The January 2010 issue of the online magazine Mormon Entrepreneur has lengthy interviews of:

* Paul Allen, Founder and CEO of FamilyLink.com

* Alan Eaton, Founder and CEO of OneGreatFamily

* Janet Hovorka, Founder and Development Director of Generation Maps

* John Vilburn, Founder and CEO of Ohana Software

* Russell Wilding, CEO of Footnote.com

The interviews were done for an LDS church publication, many of the questions pertain to LDS church issues, and the companies are involved with the church family history department in some way, but they do provide information and insight into each profiled company. The most interesting thoughts for me included:

* "Everything we do will be on FamilyLink.com including genealogy searches, all the databases that we’ve accumulated over the last 3 years, the 1.2 billion records, and all the family trees that are being built." - Paul Allen

* "OneGreatFamily was built to be the skeleton of the human family tree, and the technology is there ready for people to hang all kinds of meat on the bones, to fill out the stories, and we have stories in OneGreatFamily. " -- Alan Eaton

* "...I am passionate about having family history out where I can see it. We can do any style or any design that someone wants to do. We can do things from any type of file. We’re trying to make this the place to do genealogical printing. There really aren’t any other companies out there that can make any type of chart from any file." - Janet Hovorka

* "I’ve seen some companies that have started to address that portion of the market where you are not just finding out who your ancestors are, but really learning about their lives. That includes journals, histories, photos, and knowing about the way things were at the time your ancestors lived. " - John Vilburn

* "That’s what we’re trying to help tell—their stories. Not just an index. “There is no history—only biographies.” That’s what we are about. That is what is different about our company. That’s why we go after historical content, not just birth, death, and marriage records. We’re after pension files, newspapers, and all kinds of military records." - Russell Wilding

Please go to the Mormon Entrepreneur website and read all of the interviews. There were some statistics embedded in these interviews - the one that surprised me the most was that a survey indicates that only 1% to 3% of LDS church members "do family history work." Each of the interviewees stressed that they are committed to working with the LDS Church members and the larger genealogy community.

Another interesting statistic are the number of employees for each company --

* FamilyLink = 50
* OneGreatFamily = 30
* Generation Maps = 6
* Ohana Software = 9
* Footnote.com = 30

My thanks to Claire LeBeaux of OneGreatFamily for sharing the link to the magazine with me. The Ancestry Insider also linked to the magazine interviews last week.

Exploring FamilyLink.com Trees - Big FAIL

In my post Exploring FamilyLink.com yesterday, I noted that FamilyLink.com had the look and feel of a social networking and family tree web site.

In this post I want to discuss the "Tree" tab on the FamilyLink.com web site. If you don't want to read the step-by-step of adding data, please skip to the bottom of the post for a summary.

I entered three generations of my ancestors into the We're Related application on Facebook about one year ago. The information included birth and death dates and places, and a head-shot photo of these people. Here is what the Tree on We're Related looked like:




As I mentioned yesterday, my expectation was that the information in the We're Related application on Facebook would be brought across into the FamilyLink.com Tree application (which can be accessed from Facebook and other social networking sites). That is, I believe, a logical expectation - that when a web site changes from one form to another that it retains the user-contributed information to the new web site.

When I checked FamilyLink.com several months ago, only my own name and photo had been migrated into FamilyLink.com - the other persons had disappeared from the site. My "Relatives" had been migrated also, but that was it! I added my mother and father in order to see how easy it was to use the new FamilyLink.com interface. Here is what the Tree looked like yesterday:

As you can see, the data I had in the We're Related application on Facebook did not migrate to FamilyLink.com. It's like I wasted several hours adding information to We're Related. My expectations were certainly not met!

I wanted to see how long it took to add a person to the Tree, so I decided to add some parents to my parents. I clicked on the "+" sign to the right of my mother's name, and a larger box with her birth and death information opened:

I could have edited her information if I had wanted to. There is an "Edit Info / Add Family" button in the middle of the dropdown box, so I clicked that and saw:

Now the information for my mother and my father is displayed. Above each name is a button to "Add / Edit Parents." I clicked on that in my father's box, and was able to add the name, birth date, birth place, death date, and death place for his parents - Frederick Walton Seaver and Alma Bessie Richmond, as shown below:

I could also choose the marital status for them, but could not add a marriage date or a marriage place. This operation to add two more people to my FamilyLink.com Tree took just over four minutes. That seems, to me, to be really slow. At this rate, I could have my 2,000 ancestors and their children entered by, oh, say Christmas 2018!

FamilyLink.com does not offer a GEDCOM upload yet. When I asked why they did not offer it, their representative said they wanted to connect close relatives rather than use up precious bandwidth having hundreds or thousands of persons in their database.

I also asked several months ago why the persons that were in the We're Related application on Facebook were not migrated into FamilyLink.com, and was told that they were working on it. It hasn't happened yet! I sincerely doubt that it will happen.

What does my FamilyLink.com Tree look like now? Here's a screen shot with the parents of my father added:

I am not going to waste any more time to enter ancestors and family members one at a time into this Family Tree application. Without the ability to upload a GEDCOM file, it is worthless to me as a researcher. There are many Family Tree applications that are free that permit invitation of relatives to join publicly or privately. My impression is that FamilyLink.com doesn't want the GEDCOM uploads. If they did, it would already be added, since it can't be that difficult to do (and I note that there are many other web sites with the capability).

I also noted that there is no way to see the Trees of my "Relatives" unless I add the "Relative" to my Tree. Three of my four "Relatives" are distant cousins - some out eight or ten generations.

There appears to be no way to search for other persons with my ancestors. So nobody else can find me or my nearly barren FamilyLink.com Tree.

I've asked myself several times "why has FamilyLink.com gone to all of this trouble to create this web site and then prevent researchers from using it effectively?" Then I remember that the statistic we saw several months ago was that there were 50 million users of the We're Related application on Facebook who had created 300 million person profiles. Do the math - that's six per Tree on average. I had entered 16 persons - more than the average.

But FamilyLink.com apparently doesn't have those 300 million persons (that were in We're Related application) in their database, do they? Did all of the pictures and other information that was entered by those 50 million persons migrate from We're Related to FamilyLink? Mine certainly didn't. It's a pain to add content of that nature again - why should I? After all of this hassle, why would anybody even try to use FamilyLink.com?

I believe that the answer is that FamilyLink.com just wants the "hits" from the fact that 50 million people have the application on their Facebook page. If each registered person checked it out every three months, that would average out to be almost 6 million hits a month (see the FamilyLink.com traffic post). Or does FamilyLink.com get a hit each time a person with the application logs into Facebook (or other social networking site)? I don't know. FamilyLink.com sends out emails telling users to add more relatives to their tree - does that cause the users to check the application? I don't know. What I do understand is that advertising revenue is based on the traffic to a web site, and FamilyLink.com can show very high traffic - equivalent or higher than Ancestry.com. But the web site seems "hollow" - there is not much content, certainly not for genealogy researchers. You can draw your own conclusions.

My opinion is that the FamilyLink.com web site and tree application is useless to me as a genealogist and family historian. I can find free (and paid) family tree sites that allow me to share my tree with relatives, accept a GEDCOM upload, and allow me to search for persons.

The Trees on FamilyLink.com are a Big FAIL, in my humble opinion.

Exploring FamilyLink.com

After discovering that FamilyLink.com is a very highly ranked genealogy website, I decided to explore it some more and try to understand WHY it is highly ranked. A high ranking implies that a lot of people go to the site regularly.

http://www.familylink.com/ changed their web site in recent months - now the site looks like a Social Networking and Family Tree web site. Here is the home page, which comes up if you enter the URL (If you access it from Facebook (and presumably other social networks that have the FamilyLink application), the first screen is the second one blow with your name on it - you are already logged in):



If you are not registered for FamilyLink, then you must register - for free - in order to use the site. If you are already a member, then you can sign in to the site. After you sign in, the "Home" page (in the menu bar) looks like this:





There are six tabs on the menu bar - for "Home," "Relatives," "Profile," "Memories," "Events" and "Tree." The right sidebar in the screen above shows "Notifications and Requests," and a "To-Do" list, and "Possible Relatives." The main part of the screen shows recent Facebook status lines from my "Relatives" already in the system. These "Relatives" were in the We're Related" application on Facebook before We're Related morphed into FamilyLink several months ago.

The "Relatives" tab shows the persons included in my "Relatives" list, and the "Profile" tab provides a way to add or edit information about myself in FamilyLink.

The "Memories" tab screen is shown below:



On the "Memories" page, you can answer questions about yourself or your "Relatives" in order to share information with the family members invited to share FamilyLink with you (your "Relatives."

The screen below shows the "Events" tab page:




On this page, you can create a custom page to share an event, make an announcement, upload photos, etc. The "Relatives" will be able to view it and add comments or photos to the page. There are a number of custom page templates already made for you in the middle of the screen - all you have to do is click on one of them and fill in the blanks. I have not done any of these tasks yet in FamilyLink because of a lack of time. If the site works well and quickly, then I will probably add more content to my site, add more relatives, etc.

My expectation when I first saw the "new" FamilyLink three months ago was that the Family Tree data that I had entered over the past year into the We're Related application on Facebook would be included in the "new" FamilyLink" application and web site. My expectations have not been satisfied yet. I will discuss the "Tree" tab in the next post in this series.

So far, FamilyLink looks like some of the other Social Networking sites that have family trees - it is visually attractive, informative, inviting to new contacts, members can invite their relatives to join and participate, etc.

Genealogy Site Traffic Trends - the other FamilyLink Sites

Being a "numbers guy," I am interested in how genealogy information providers stack up against each other, and what the trends are over a period of time. I last looked at genealogy website traffic in January 2009 in a series of posts.

For this series, I am using the Quantcast statistics because they are easily understandable, and free. There are other websites that measure traffic, and their traffic statistics may be different from Quantcast. To simplify things, I will show only the number of Visits - not Persons, Page Views or other statistics available from Quantcast.

FamilyLink.com has seven web sites identified - I discussed FamilyLink.com and WorldVitalRecords.com yesterday. Here are the Traffic charts for the other five FamilyLink.com sites.

The first one is www.GenealogyWise.com (a social networking site announced in July):




The second one is www.WebTree.com (a family tree site, still available, but nothing can be added):



The third one is www.WorldHistory.com (a family tree plus history site, still in beta, but available):

The fourth one is www.BigFamilyPhotos.com (a commercial photo printing site, thank you, Tamura Jones, for the lead!):

The fifth one is www.GenSeek.com (the FHL catalog site plus, not launched yet, but available through Facebook):

The traffic summaries, for the last five months (taken directly from the charts), for all of the FamilyLink.com applications is:

* www.FamilyLink.com - monthly US People = 7.1 million, daily Visits = 508,000

* www.WorldVitalRecords.com - monthly People = 123,800, daily Visits = 7,900
* www.GenealogyWise.com - monthly People = 16,800, daily Visits = 1,200

* www.WebTree.com - monthly People = 2,300, daily Visits = 91

* www.WorldHistory.com - monthly People = 9,500 , daily Visits = 1,100

* www.BigFamilyPhotos.com - monthly People = 1,100, daily Visits = NA

* www.GenSeek.com - monthly People = NA, daily Visits = NA

It looks to me that the GenealogyWise traffic is dropping quickly, the WorldHistory site has potential when it comeso ut of beta and is fully operational, WebTree is pretty much petrified, and GenSeek has significant potential if and when it launches.

WorldVitalRecords has lost traffic over the past year, and has only about 2.2% of the monthly People that Ancestry.com has.

FamilyLink.com is the mystery to me. Surely 7 million US people are NOT checking the web site to see if the tree that they put up on We're Related is up on FamilyLink.com yet. How, and why, does FamilyLink get so much traffic? Do they get a hit every time someone, that has the FamilyLink application on their Facebook page, logs on? That's the only thing I can think of to explain the traffic numbers.

Genealogy Site Traffic Trends - FamilyLink.com and WorldVitalRecords.com

Being a "numbers guy," I am interested in how genealogy information providers stack up against each other, and what the trends are over a period of time. I last looked at genealogy website traffic in January 2009 in a series of posts.

For this series, I am using the Quantcast statistics because they are easily understandable, and free. There are other websites that measure traffic, and their traffic statistics may be different from Quantcast. To simplify things, I will show only the number of Visits - not Persons, Page Views or other statistics available from Quantcast.

The first of today's websites is http://www.familylink.com- the "social network" site owned by FamilyLink.com. There are no genealogy databases at this site, only a family tree site that does not permit GEDCOM uploads at this time. In early December, the We're Related application on Facebook, a family tree site without GEDCOM uploads, was changed so that users went directly to FamilyLink.com. FamilyLink.com claimed to have millions of hits each month on We're Related. Here is the FamilyLink.com measured traffic, both US and worldwide, for the period 01/05/2009 to 01/02/2010:



As you can see, FamilyLink.com started being measured in September 2009. The average measured traffic over the past five months, for People, is 7.1 million US, and 10.2 million globally. The daily US Visits averaged about 150,000 between October and November, but averaged 500,000 in December. Usually, the People value is significantly less than the number of Visitors during a month, since many people visit more than once. That's not the case for FamilyLink.com - for the US the total number of Visits is about 4.5 million per month, while the number of People is 7.1 million. I don't know why this happens, maybe a FamilyLink.com person can explain it.

The second chart for FamilyLink.com is the sub-domain traffic:




All of the sub-domains listed are less than 1%. The main www.FamilyLink.com domain isn't listed like for other websites. Where is all of the FamilyLink.com traffic coming from?

The charts above say that the FamilyLink.com Network has seven properties, and that over the last five months those properties have averaged 10.1 million US People and 14.6 million Global People each month. Those numbers are significantly higher than Ancestry.com. The information for the network says that 74% of the People have come directly to the web sites, and 38% have come from Syndicators (which I think means sites like Facebook). I don't know why those numbers don't add up to 100%!

One of the seven FamilyLink.com properties is www.WorldVitalRecords.com, which is a genealogy subscription database website. Here is the measured traffic chart for WorldVitalRecords over the past three years:



The average monthly US People for WorldVitalRecords is 123,800, and the average monthly Global People is 157,400, over the past five months. The average number of daily Visits are about 15,000 before August 2009 and about 10,000 after the large August spike. The large spike in traffic in August reflects the free access to WorldVitalRecords just before the NGS Conference. Average daily Visits before 2009 are somewhat higher - about 24,000 in 2008.

The WorldVitalRecords sub-domain statistics are in this chart:

There are four pages of the sub-domains in alphabetical order. Only the Blog sub-domain is over 1%. Presumably, most of the traffic goes directly to the www.WorldVitalRecords.com web site, which is no surprise.

I am really confused by the FamilyLink.com traffic statistics. On the one hand, they look really good - ranked 140 in the US for the period measured - better than Ancestry.com. But where are those People going and what are they doing? Perhaps checking their FamilyLink.com family tree?

The screens above say that there are seven sites in the FamilyLink.com Network - I can think of:

* www.FamilyLink.com (family tree without GEDCOM upload capability),

* www.WorldVitalRecords.com (genealogy databases),

* www.WebTree.com (family tree with GEDCOM upload, but not adding new content),

* www.WorldHistory.com (available, but in beta),

* www.GenSeek.com (not formally launched yet, available only through Facebook application)

* www.Genealogywise.com (social networking discussion, blog, chat and group platform)

What's the seventh? I'm guessing it is the We're Related application, but that is no longer available on Facebook and other social networks. 'Tis a mystery! Any ideas, anyone?

New "Living Tree" on FamilyLink

Reading my Twitter feeds this morning, I saw this tweet from FamilyLink.com:



I thought to myself: "Finally, a new family tree program from FamilyLink.com." F
FamilyLink.com has had several cracks at putting family trees on the Internet - first with (what is now) http://www.familyhistorylink.com/ and http://www.webtree.com/, and with the We're Related application on Facebook (which I've complained about many times....).

I clicked on the link in the tweet with anticipation, and saw the http://www.familylink.com/ home page:




Uh oh, lookie there, in the right hand text it says "We'll port over your relatives from the We're Related app on Facebook." On the page above is a link to "Connect with Facebook."

Trying to be fair and balanced, I said to my self "OK, let's see what this looks like." I clicked on "Connect with Facebook" and saw a popup window to login:



I entered my Facebook login information and my http://www.familylink.com/ Home page appeared:

This is the "Stream" page which lists recent Facebook status updates from the relatives that I've included in my We're Related application on Facebook. There was the opportunity to add an update to the Stream and I took it - you can see it above - it said:

"Will the new FamilyLink tree application work better than We're Related did? I sure hope so."

With eager anticipation boiling over now, I clicked on the "Tree" link and saw:

Hmm. Only me? Where's my tree from We're Related? It wasn't much, but it had my parents, grandparents, and my children. I had painstakingly entered the information by hand, one person at a time using the very clunky We're Related interface.

Maybe my data in the We're Related application will get transferred over in the next day or two. I hope so.

Of course, if any "real family historian" is going to use any online family tree application to the fullest, they will want to upload their GEDCOM file filled with all of the names, dates, places, facts, notes, stories, and sources that they have accumulated over the years. Their hope is that distant cousins (those second, third, fourth and earlier cousins) will find the information and make a connection and share their information with them.

I'm going to wait awhile to pass judgment on the "new" FamilyLink tree. I do wonder why they would announce this release and not have the application ready to transfer the information from the We're Related application right into the new "Living Tree" (is that the right name?) application?

We're Related passes 50 Million Milestone, but ...

Have you read the press release from FamilyLink.com today concerning their We're Related application on Facebook? If not, Leland Meitzler has it in his post Surpassing 50 Million Users "We're Related" Proves Families are Popular on Facebook.

The basic claim is that there were 50 million Facebook members that have used the We're Related application, and they have posted over 300 million persons to the application. This is up from 15 million members back in January 2009.

I have written several times about We're Related, and none of it has been positive. My main complaint has been about the lack of a GEDCOM upload - at least they don't claim that "it's almost ready" anymore (like they did for over one year)!

I've tried to give it a good try, to the extent of loading by hand, one person at a time, back to my eight great-grandparents and my siblings and children. Plus some thumbnail images.

FamilyLink.com has added more to the We're Related platform on Facebook, and I thought that I would show them to you, since nobody else has (not even We're Related)! Here is the opening screen when you manage to find the We're Related application (check your Applications icon in the lower left-hand corner of the Facebook screen):


There are four tabs on the top menu (with the green background) - Family Stream, Find Relatives, Add Relatives and My Trees.

The "Family Stream" screen above shows the Facebook Updates of myself and My Relatives (all four of them). There are four tabs on the "Family Stream" page - for Add Update, Add Photos, Add Link and Add Favorite.

I clicked on the "Add Photos" link and added several photographs:



That was pretty easy, although it took up to 60 seconds to upload a 500 kb photograph.

Here is the "My Trees" screen after clicking on the link from the top menu on the first screen above:



You can see that I've added birth and death dates and places, and thumbnail pictures, to my direct family line. Doing the ten additional people a few weeks ago took over one hour.

Despite all of the publicity that FamilyLink.com puts out, my opinion is still that this Facebook application is worthless to genealogists and to persons trying to connect to distant cousins. My reasons for saying this include:

* It is v-e-r-y- S---L---O---W to use. I get frustrated by slow...

* The site has no way to navigate to siblings or children - I added my children and siblings, but cannot see their information.

There is no GEDCOM upload capability - without this it is difficult to find any relative past great-grandparents.

* I don't know if I can see the Tree or Photos of My Relatives. I have only four "Relatives" in my "Family Stream, and they have, apparently, not added a Family Tree or photos to their We're Related page. If they have, then I cannot see their Tree or their photos. I could add more "Relatives" from my Facebook Friends, but I don't want to put them through the agony of trying to use this application.

* We're Related has added another feature - the user can add a Family Pet to their We're Related page. How dumb is that? What's next - best friends? Cars?

* I could find no way to search for persons in other Facebook users' Trees - I think that that would be one way to lead me to relatives so I could share information.

* The recent announcement says "With features like photo sharing along with ability to communicate, organize communication, and keep everything private to a desired list of family members, We're Related makes perfect sense for keeping family together and learning about loved ones." This apparently refers to the Family Stream items, including photos.

Am I missing something? Is my problem here that I don't have enough relatives that have added photos and trees? If so, then would some Facebook Friend please invite me to be their Relative so I can see their Family Stream and Tree items?

As I've pointed out before, the 50 million We're Related users and the 300 million persons in Family Trees works out to about 6 persons per tree. That is not very many, and is probably indicative of the difficulty in using the We're Related application on Facebook. My guess is that 90% of the We're Related users use it once and give up on it. Others, like me, keep coming back in hopes that it has improved capabilities.

Previous Genea-Musings posts on We're Related application can be found here.

Goodbye FamilyHistoryLink.com

I received an email late last night from FamilyLink.com that said that their family tree web site, http://www.familyhistorylink.com/, would disappear as of 15 August 2009. The email said:

"Progress is constant and can make some online services obsolete. This is the case with FamilyHistoryLink. This service will be closing its doors on August 15. Please take some time between now and then to download or save any key messages that are important to you for your future reference. Then get started using GenealogyWise to see what the future holds for interactive genealogy through social networking."

Now, http://www.familyhistorylink.com/ started out as http://www.familylink.com/. I tried several times to upload a GEDCOM file to www.FamilyHistoryLink.com and could never make it work for me. So, it is no big loss for me, since I was never able to use it effectively. Now, if you were successful in uploading a GEDCOM to FHL, and that was your only online family tree, then you will need to retrieve it somehow.

The email noted that GenealogyWise was the latest thing in social networks, and that readers should join up:

"As a member of FamilyHistoryLink, we wanted to make sure you are among the first to witness the unveiling of a new social network for genealogists, GenealogyWise. This exciting new service takes off where we left off at FamilyHistoryLink to combine community interaction with tools and resources for people who are interested in researching and sharing their family history with others."

What? If they had wanted the faithful FHL users to be the "first to witness the unveiling" they would have sent this email out a week ago. They waited until over 4,000 persons signed up on GenealogyWise before sending this email to FHL users.

and later in the email:

"Join surname groups, explore ancestral records, share photos, video, and family trees. Create and customize your personal profile to tell others about your research interests and privately receive and respond to emails from other users without ever publishing your email address to the public. You can also share online family trees and personal research pages to collaborate with others. And the service is completely free!"

Hmm, "...share online family trees..." Funny, I haven't seen any online family trees - yet - at Genealogy Wise. Frankly, I hope that they permit GEDCOM uploads on Genealogy Wise so that it becomes a full-fledged social "genealogy" network, not just a social "talk" network.

Left unsaid is what happens to WebTree at http://www.webtree.com/. This is another family tree application created by FamilyLink.com about one year ago. I was successful at uploading a GEDCOM and putting a family tree to this site, but in recent months the site has not allowed me to login and see or work with my tree.

So - goodbye FamilyHistoryLink.com - no big loss. Whither WebTree - will it persist or disappear? Will the Facebook We're Related application ever permit a GEDCOM upload? (It's useless to genealogists without one IMHO.) Is a GEDCOM upload in Genealogy Wise's future? (Will it work well?) Will WorldVitalRecords.com ever add more vital records? When will GenSeek.com launch? Is WorldHistory.com launched or not? (if not, then when?) Genealogists want to know these things but are struggling without a scorecard.

The genea-soap opera "As FamilyLink Turns" continues.

Genealogywise = Facebook for Genealogists

It was bound to happen, and FamilyLink.com has done it. They started a dedicated "Facebook for Genealogists." I received an email today describing it,
which included:

"FamilyLink has created a new genealogy social network named GenealogyWise.com. It's like Facebook for genealogy, with member profiles, video sharing, forums, member blogs, chat, surname groups and more."

Of course, I had to try it out. [Note: there was no request to embargo this information...]

I found the web page at www.GenealogyWise.com and signed up for an account. Then I added my genealogy information (which can be edited) to create my page, and I was on the site.

Here is the home page:




On the home page, the member can check on the Latest Activity, read Blog Posts (apparently any member can post?), and deal with your account. The tabs across the top are Main, Invite (use your email client's address book? Um, not me!), My Page, Members, forum, Groups, Blogs, Video, Genealogy Search, Chat, Store, and More.

I changed the default template for "My Page to look like (two screens):

On this page, I can see my Friends, my Text Box, My Photos, and my Comments Wall.

This website sure looks more friendly than Facebook does, and it loads much quicker. Of course, there are not 200 million people on it yet to sort through!

Will this site work for the genealogy community? Only if a critical mass of members sign up and submit content. To me, a "critical mass" means tens of thousands, not hundreds, of active members. It's possible, I think.

Members on the site need "Friends" to share with, and so I invite my readers to be my Friends. The only way I saw to ask someone to be a Friend, other than submitting your email address book, or inputting individual email addresses, is to go to the Members page, clicking on each person's image, and click on "Add As Friend." The person will have to approve you as a Friend. You can search for a Member also, and after becoming their Friend, you can ask their Friends to be your Friend too.

I'm sure that I, and other bloggers, will have a lot more to say about this website. At first glance, it looks promising.

First Look at WorldHistory.com - Post 1

I've been watching the http://www.worldhistory.com/ web site (part of the FamilyLink.com company) add content gradually over the past few months, and now they are broadcasting some of their information to the world on Twitter and Facebook, so I thought that I would post some screen views of the web site.

The "About Us" page says in part):

"What is History? Sounds like a silly question. Think about it. History is comprised of events, people, places, and the sources that tell us the story. Each and every event in history involved a place or multiple places, impacted people directly and indirectly, and took place in a certain moment in time. There are a lot of dots to connect, and we connect those dots. More importantly, we connect you to those dots, we connect you to history."

And...

"...The battle of Gettysburg took place at a certain place and time. We know the famous names associated with the event, but what has often been ignored in history are all the people who made the event possible. We know about General Pickett's charge, but without the confederate soldiers who gave their lives for that charge, what would it be? Should the foot soldier be remembered like the generals? We think so. They are part of the story. Without their story, and unless we connect those dots, it is an incomplete book. WorldHistory allows you to connect people to people, people to events, and your ancestors to events."

From the start, this web site has sounded very ambitious to me, and it will be a very useful site when it has matured. Here is the current home page:



There are eight links to other pages across the top (below the logo and search box). There are three feature boxes near the bottom of the page - to obtain a Timeline of world history for a specific year, to Explore your world using interactive maps, and to Upload your family tree and connect your ancestors to history. We'll look at those in a later post.

In the middle of the page are a timeline for a specific year which lists historical events around a given year (apparently fairly random each time you come to the home page) and an invitation to sign up for a free account on the web site. You have to sign up in order to upload your family tree data.

The first link across the top is to "Map," and when I clicked on it, this screen appeared:

It opened on San Diego where I live (the site must sense where I live, even though I'm not logged into the site), and had some names and places on the left margin and some stick-pins on the map. If you click on the stick-pin, you can see the event or person that it depicts.

The map is powered by Google Maps, and there is a timeline across the top of it. If you click on a year in the Timeline, you can see specific events and people that are depicted on the map. Of course, you can click on the event or person to see the details about them on the site.

Next, I clicked on the "People" link, and the "People in History" page opened:

The list of people shown are "famous people" for all of history, ranked apparently by the frequency of searches on the site. There is a cloud of People Tags on the right margin where you can select specific groups like Artists, African-Americans, Politicians, etc. Another alternative would be to click on a year in the Timeline and see people that lived in that year that are in the database.

There is a Search field above the Timeline, and the user can select from "Famous People" or "Ancestor Data." The "Ancestor Data" seems to be empty right now. The user can select to use or not use the Timeline.

The next link at the top of the page is "Events" which is shown below:

The "Events" page works similarly to the "People" page - the user can enter a term in the Search field or click on a year on the Timeline, and can select from the Event cloud on the right of the screen.

The fourth link at the top of the page goes to the "Artifact" page - and the setup is similar to the "Events" page - a Search field and a Timeline at the top and a list of "Artifact Options" on the right:

The "Timeline" link at the top leads to a page with user-defined Timelines, a Search box at the top and a list of categories on the left side of the screen:

The "Ancestors" link at the top of the page leads to a Sign Up page because I was not logged into the site. If you sign up, then you can upload your family tree database. The site will Geocode your place names so that they can be shown on the map:

We will explore the "Ancestors" link in later posts.

The seventh link at the top is to "Popular" Events or People. The Events are ranked for the current day and the current week:

The eighth link at the top of the page is to "More" which lists things that the World History people would like to add to their web site:

I have worked with this site for awhile now, trying all of the links and the bells and whistles. My impression is that it is very well thought out and navigation is intuitive and easy to learn. It works pretty fast on everything but the "Ancestors" page. My impression is that the "Ancestors" page is not yet fully functional.

http://www.worldhistory.com/ is probably not quite ready for prime time use yet, but it is getting to the point where everything works. I will write future posts when a family tree can be uploaded and exercised.

I think that FamilyLink.com has a winner here. I wonder when it will be available for everyone to upload a GEDCOM and work with it as a research tool?

Are Twitter/Facebook interns for FamilyLink doing their job?

Most readers know that http://www.genseek.com/, http://www.worldhistory.com/ and http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/ are all part of the FamilyLink.com company. Readers also know that the We're Related application on Facebook has millions of users already signed up and using the fmaily tree application.

Last month, Paul B. Allen, the CEO of FamilyLink.com advertised on Twitter for "Twitter interns" who would take jobs at FamilyLink.com and promote FamilyLink.com products.

From what I can tell, several of them are working hard at promoting FamilyLink.com products on Twitter and Facebook.

There are Twitter entities for users named genseek, worldhistory, and FamilyLink, and all of them are active commenting on genealogy-related activities.

The genseek entity seems to be very active on Twitter - here is a screen shot of their posts:

Genseek on Twitter has posted (as of right now) 86 updates, has 1,531 followers and is following 1,904 other twitterers. What is impressive is that genseek has gained so many followers so quickly, since their first tweet is dated April 27th - less than four weeks!

Note the top tweet above - it links to five surname posts somewhere - we'll find out where shortly!

On Facebook, there are Pages for Genealogy and Family History (with a home page of http://www.genseek.com/) and World History (with a home page of http://www.worldhistory.com/). Here are the Facebook pages for these three entities:

On these pages, the owners are highlighting web pages and blog posts that pertain to the interests of the Facebook pages. These Facebook entities were created in just the last month or so, and currently have 6,234 (Genseek), 4,019(Family History) and 589 (World History) fans on Facebook. These fan numbers are pretty impressive to me - they greatly exceed the number of fans of my Genea-Musings page (only 104 followers) and the number of Facebook Friends I have (441 at last count). Where did they all come from? The answer is, I think, probably "from the We're Related" application user base that is on Facebook.

From the above, it looks to me like FamilyLink has found a way to bring some of the millions of We're Related users into the genealogy community - a social network - on Facebook. By exposing these "We're Related" users to the genea-bloggers community on the Genealogy and Family History Facebook Pages, they are exposing them to the existing base of genealogy industry people and to the genea-blogger work product, which I really appreciate!

Now, what about the Twitter page shown above with links to Davis, Garcia, Miller, Rodriguez and Wilson? Well, the links go to Facebook, where the FamilyLink.com people created Pages for these surnames in hopes that Twitter readers and We're Related users will participate on these Pages. Yesterday, they created Pages for Smith, Jones, Brown, Williams and Johnson. Here is the Smith Family History page:

How is the above Smith Family History Page any different from a message board or a mailing list or a Smith Family web page? The main difference is the interactivity allowed on Facebook - any fan of the page can create a post, upload a story or a photograph, comment on someone else's post, etc. It's all in one place. It's a community - a social network - where people can share information about their surname and family.

Most importantly, the use of Twitter and Facebook appeals to persons who are not yet invested in, or perhaps even aware of, the more traditional genealogy world of repositories, books, periodicals, indexes, databases, static web pages, etc.. The future of genealogy is with younger people - those who are technology savvy and who can grow to be the genealogy researchers, bloggers, writers, software developers and business entrepreneurs of tomorrow, Many of them are enthusiastically using Twitter and Facebook now.

Using Twitter and Facebook to generate interest and enthusiasm for http://www.genseek.com/ before it is officially launched is a wise business move by FamilyLink.com. The challenge for FamilyLink.com is to make the reality of www.Genseek.com exceed the expectations of the potential Genseek user base.

It looks like someone at FamilyLink.com is doing their job - are they the "Twitter interns?" I hope so, and that they are fun jobs!