I love it when someone at a genealogy conference stops by our exhibit booth and says “So, what exactly is Genlighten?” (usually while unwrapping a chocolate from our candy bowl). As you can imagine, I’ve given lots of different answers to that question over the past year.

How I answer the question “What does your site do?”

An example: I often tell a story about wanting to get an obituary for one of my ancestors from Jefferson County, New York and how nice it would be to find a local researcher in Theresa or Watertown who could track it down for me. “Genlighten helps you do that,” I say.

But most of the time I try to get out a simple, succinct “elevator pitch” — something like:

“We’re an Internet-enabled, human-powered search and retrieval network for genealogical documents;” or

“We connect you with local researchers who can help you find the genealogical records you’re looking for.”

Sometimes people get the concept right off, but often they don’t. They seem to need something to mentally compare us to… an existing business concept that they already grasp.

A “high concept” startup

Over time, I’ve tried to improve on our elevator pitches and craft a phrase positioning Genlighten as what Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners calls a “high concept startup“. That’s where you describe your business model using an analogy to an existing business that people already know well. The best I’ve come up with in this vein is probably:

“We’re kinda like eBay for genealogy document retrieval services.”

But there are several problems with that one. First, not everyone likes eBay, particularly lately. Also, Genlighten isn’t focused on bidding or auctions of genealogical services, so the analogy doesn’t really hold that well. Plus, at least one other genealogy-oriented startup is now using the eBay analogy — and it fits them better.

When I learned about Etsy, the online marketplace for handmade-crafts, I tried saying “We’re kinda like Etsy for genealogy lookups”, but few inside the genealogy community seemed to get the reference.

Tapping the wisdom of our exhibit booth visitors

On more than one occasion, visitors to the booth have come up with their own high-concept pitch for us. I heard it again a few nights ago at the IAJGS Conference here in Chicago:

“So, you’re kinda like Random Acts, only you’re not free.”

This one made me cringe the first time I heard it, at the FGS meeting in Ft. Wayne, Indiana over a year ago. It still does a little, though it’s actually starting to grow on me with time. It’s true, we are a little like Random Acts — we help you find people who can find genealogical records — and it’s also true that we’re not free. But we differ from Random Acts in several highly important ways, and those differences are part of why we feel justified charging for our services.

How is Genlighten different from Random Acts?

If you’re not already familiar with it, Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness (RAOGK) is a marvelous website that lists volunteers willing to perform genealogical lookups for free (or for just the cost of copies or gas). It embodies the spirit of volunteerism that powers much of the genealogical community: researchers help other researchers without expecting to be paid for their time.

I’m always honored to be compared to RAOGK, but of course our business model is significantly different than theirs! We want to help lookup providers get paid for their time and expertise (not just their expenses) in retrieving genealogy documents. And we aim to make money ourselves in return for the service our site provides. I discussed our “value proposition” in an earlier post. Here are some specific ways I think Genlighten will be different from RAOGK — different, that is, in a good way:

• We’ll provide a simple way to enable messaging back and forth between lookup clients and providers without the need to exchange e-mail or regular mail addresses. This should enhance privacy and security and help minimize spam.
• Each of our providers will have the chance to create a profile describing their genealogy background and experience so clients can make an informed choice when competing providers are available in a given area.
• When providers are out of town or on vacation, they’ll be able to temporarily put their lookup offerings on hold. That way, clients won’t have to wait for weeks wondering why they haven’t gotten a response to their lookup requests.
• The site will provide an online payment interface with state-of-the-art security, allowing clients to order lookups conveniently using credit cards or electronic checks.
• Providers will deliver the documents they find by uploading scanned digital images to our site. Clients can then download the the documents they ordered immediately without having to wait for them to come in the mail.
• Clients will be able to rate and review each of our providers based on their reliability, responsiveness, and customer service.
• The combination of client ratings, researcher profiles, and fees set by the providers will create a strong sense of accountability that will allow our users to order lookups from our providers with confidence.

Still in search of the right analogy

So we’re not really like eBay, and we differ in important ways from RAOGK, and we’re a little like Etsy but that probably doesn’t mean much to you. What then is our ideal high-concept elevator pitch? As you probably guessed right from the start of this post, I’m still working on it. And I’d welcome any suggestions that readers of this blog might have.

Update:  the Industry Standard has an even more credible take on this one.

Well, we’ve all heard that social networking is the “next big thing” in genealogical research. But is the LDS Church really planning a hostile takeover of Facebook to “help monetize its genealogy business”? I’m going to go out on a limb and say…. no, not a chance. Here’s the story, according to respected private equity website TheDeal.com:

“Here’s one you don’t hear every day: The Mormon church is reportedly making a hostile bid for Facebook Inc. Brooklyn blogger Zach Klein says an “employee close to the deal” told him the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints wants the social network to help sanctify, meaning monetize, its large genealogy business.

Idle chatter, hipster hucksterism, blasphemy punishable by an eternity of hell-fire? Who knows (and quite possibly all of the above)? The LDS Church does have money to burn. And Facebook prophet Mark Zuckerberg, with his choir boy demeanor, might make a nice addition to those Tabernacle singers.”

Originating as this rumor does from “Brooklyn blogger Zach Klein”, this one sounds pretty easy to dismiss. Only one problem — TheDeal.com updates its article on the topic with a comment from Lyman Kirkland, ostensibly from LDS Church Public Affairs, denying the rumor. So far so good… but Kirkland’s comment spells the name of the Church incorrectly!

OK, so there’s still no way this is gonna happen. But what if it did? How exactly would owning Facebook help the LDS Church monetize its vast genealogy resources? How would that help further the Church’s overall objectives? And if Facebook is really worth some $15B, how is the Church going to afford the purchase? That’s a lot of tithing!

I was as intrigued as anyone when I read on Dick Eastman’s blog and others earlier this month about Ancestry’s new Chinese-language site, www.jiapu.cn. In my casual familiarity with Chinese culture I’ve noticed a strong dedication to maintaining and respecting family lineage, so bringing sophisticated online genealogy research tools to China seems like a great move on Ancestry’s part to me.

But it got even more interesting when I actually visited the site. I was greeted by an attractive-looking tree logo (brown tree trunk with red leaves) with accompanying red type that looked faintly familiar — not from Ancestry’s existing sites — but from ours! Take a look and see what you think.

OK, so there are plenty of differences:

• Jiapu’s leaves are two different colors and a slightly different shape than ours.
• Our tree has a kind of sunburst in the background illuminating it, but Jiapu’s doesn’t.
• Jiapu’s logo is animated with ‘windblown’ leaves that move off to the right when you mouse over it; ours isn’t animated at all.

But there are also several glaring similarities:

• The jiapu tree trunk is a nearly identical shade of brown as ours; it also is angled up and to the right as ours is
• One of jiapu’s two leaf colors looks the same as ours
• Their name is red with a black tagline; so is ours

So how did this similarity come about? My guess is that it’s random coincidence — yet another example of two sets of talented people working completely independently and coming up with something similar without the benefit of any knowledge of the other’s work. Happens all the time.

I talked in an earlier post about the genesis of our logo. We filed for trademark protection on it in June of this year. I have no idea when and for what countries Ancestry’s jiapu.cn logo was trademarked (though I’m definitely curious).

I probably wouldn’t have even bothered to blog about this issue at all if it weren’t for a certain recent lawsuit filed by Ancestry against Millenia and BTH2. The topic of the lawsuit? Similarities in the color, shape, and wording of two different genealogy companies’ tree logos (among other branding-related elements). Hmm…

As I flew out to Utah and drove back to Chicago this week, I found myself revisiting an anecdote from a book I’d read in junior high called Ball Four — a tell-all book about professional baseball written by one-time Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton. I don’t recommend the book to my readers (I’ve pretty much filed my reading of it under the heading “misspent youth”) but at least one insightful concept from it remains with me: the idea of “games almost tied”.

During the 1969 baseball season chronicled in the book, Bouton was a relief pitcher for the Seattle Pilots. As he watched his team frequently struggle to come from behind in later innings, almost tie the game, but ultimately fall short, he observed that no baseball statistic existed to track the number of such valiant but unsuccessful comeback efforts. To meet this need, he coined the term “games almost tied”, which if adopted, would presumably go next to the win and loss columns in baseball standings. The poignancy of his idea struck me powerfully at the time and still does. What has this got to do with genealogy and family history, you ask? I’ll try to explain.

When we look at pedigree charts or family group sheets, marriage licenses or death certificates, what we’re seeing is basically “history as written by the winners” (to paraphrase Alex Haley, among others). These outlines of our ancestors’ lives of necessity omit mention of the relationships that were almost formalized, but not quite — of the families and children that might have been. Just as baseball standings would be enriched by considering the number of “games almost tied”, so (I’m tempted to conclude) family history research might take on an additional poignancy and relevance were we to occasionally throw light on some of the “almosts” that our ancestors navigated through.

Of course, there are good reasons that we tend to be hesitant to discuss old boyfriends/girlfriends, broken-off relationships and the like — and instead leave them to become inspiration for countless country music ballads and folk tunes. But even though they don’t fit in established slots on genealogical forms, I for one would be grateful if I had some insights into my ancestors’ near misses, whether in relationships, careers, geographic location, etc.. What about you?

After a month with almost no genealogy-related travel, the Genlighten outreach team (my wife and me) will be manning our exhibit booth at several genealogical conferences in August:

Midwestern Roots, August 15-16

This conference is sponsored by the Indiana Historical Society and will be held in Indianapolis, Indiana.  Speakers will include Dick Eastman, Susan Kaufman, David Lifferth, Stephen Morse, Beau Sharbrough, and Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak, among others.  Several local archives and repositories, including The Indiana State Archives, the Indiana State Library Genealogy Division and the Indiana Historical Society’s William Henry Smith Memorial Library will extend their hours and offer special workshops before and during the conference.

International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, August 17-22

We couldn’t miss this one, seeing as it’s being held right in downtown Chicago (almost in our backyard, if you don’t count the drive down the Edens or on the Outer Drive.)  From reading the program, JewishGen 2008 appears to offer an unusually wide variety of presentations (including an extensive film festival!) and a strong emphasis on learning to use local resources.  In particular, a large number of cemetery visits and excursions to local libraries and museums in the Chicagoland area are planned.  Sources and techniques specific to Jewish genealogical research are of course given extensive coverage (with a significant emphasis on Eastern European resources).  Advance registration is still available.

Stop by and see us!

I’d like to extend a special invitation to readers of this blog to stop by our exhibit booth at either of these two conferences coming up in August.  Feel free to grab a chocolate or two from our bowl and say hi.  We’d love to meet you!

At genealogy conferences and in some of the responses we’ve received to our recent e-mails to genealogical societies, potential providers have occasionally referred to Genlighten as a “middle man” in the lookup process. Though the connotations of this term can be somewhat negative, it’s a label we’re willing to live with. After all:

1. We aim to make it easier for genealogical researchers to earn income by offering lookups.
2. We plan to receive a commission on each lookup request we process.
3. By creating an online lookup marketplace where genealogy researchers and lookup providers can find each other, we are indeed acting as a form of middle man (though we would probably prefer the term “third party intermediary”).

I’d like to use this post to clarify our intermediary role and explain the value we offer potential lookup providers.

Transaction Fees, but no Listing Fees or Subscriptions

We’ve decided to follow a “transaction fee” business model on our site, rather than a subscription model (such as Ancestry uses) or a listing fee model (which eBay uses). We chose that approach because it lowers the up-front risk to both providers and clients. A provider who offers lookups through us only pays to use our platform when a lookup transaction is successfully completed. If they don’t get any requests, they don’t pay us anything. Similarly, a potential customer pays us nothing unless they find a lookup offering they’re really interested in.

How It Works — A Numerical Example

Suppose the provider sets their price at $10 to retrieve a copy of a vital record from a local government archive. Our commission rate is 15% for independent providers (we discount it to 10% for societies). So when a customer orders a lookup and the provider successfully delivers the requested document, the provider would receive $8.50 and Genlighten would receive a $1.50 commission. [The customer would also pay a separate handling fee to cover the cost of payment processing.]

The Value Genlighten Offers

Why should providers pay us a commission, rather than keeping the entire $10 for themselves? Why shouldn’t they just “cut out the middle man”?

We think we offer a lot in return for the fees we receive. In particular, Genlighten aims to give our providers:

• A simple tool for creating both lookup listings and customized data input forms, so the provider gets specific, well-defined requests and just the right info they need to fulfill those requests.
• A secure online shopping cart that handles upfront payments via PayPal, credit cards and electronic checks.
• A robust customer feedback and rating capability.
• Targeted advertising on genealogy-relevant sites and searches so prospective clients can easily find providers’ lookup offerings.
• Aggregated world-wide demand so providers will have enough requests to make the regular trip to the local archive profitable.

Are these benefits enough to justify our fees? We sure hope so. And we’d love to hear what you think, one way or the other.

['Middle Man' image from Phil Hatchard's photostream on www.Flickr.com.]

A reader of this blog commented on my post comparing collaborative genealogy websites and reminded me that FamilySearch had been working hard on its own flash-based family tree navigation interface, similar to Geni.com’s. I’d completely forgotten about it when writing my review, and I was glad for the chance to catch up on the progress the folks at FamilySearch have made recently.

Basic Look and Feel

Here’s a screen shot using the same example data I used in the earlier post. As you can see, there are several obvious similarities to Geni’s flash-enabled interface. The compass rose and magnify/minify slider are both there, for example. You can navigate throughout the tree by simply grabbing the tree image with the mouse and sliding it back and forth on the screen, which I really like. Not all of Geni’s bells and whistles are implemented, but the sense of easy and fun exploration has been reproduced well.

NFS’s Family Tree isn’t a shameless knock-off either. Reviewing the FSLabs blog archive, it appears to have been introduced in about December of 2007, about 12 months after Geni first came online. Right from the start, Family Tree was designed around the traditional left-to-right pedigree chart, rather than Geni’s bottom-to-top chronological flow. Though I can’t explain why (other than habit and experience) I think I prefer NFS’ approach, at least so far. The inclusion of the right-hand panel highlighting a particular member of the tree is also a distinctive feature in Family Tree, achieved at the sacrifice of smaller font sizes for the tree itself.

Search Capability

Of course, the most distinctive and powerful advantage offered by NFS’ Family Tree lies in the modest -looking “Search” tab. Here you can access the LDS Church’s massive database of genealogical data and potentially tie in new individuals or ancestral lines. Of course, this information will only be truly valuable if it’s well-sourced and documented. As I mentioned in my previous post, it remains to be seen how diligent NFS users will be in entering research notes and source citations. Here’s hoping that many are able to catch that vision.

Summary

The still-under-development Family Tree capability greatly enhances my opinion of NFS as a fun, friendly site to use for managing my genealogy data online. Thanks to Gary for commenting on my earlier post and pointing me in this direction. I assume Gary is the same one who posts regularly on the FamilySearch Labs blog.

I will be following NFS’ efforts closely in the coming months and I plan to report on my own progress using the site in future posts. If there’s anything you’d particularly like me to try out, just let me know in the comments.

As I mentioned in the previous post, we’ve sent e-mail to about 760 local genealogical societies over the past week, inviting them to partner with Genlighten and to encourage their volunteers to offer lookups through our site.

One of these societies sent me a reply yesterday that went something like this:

“Our society met today to talk about your proposal. We have a few questions:

1. How much do you suggest we charge? [for lookups they would offer on our site]

2. Is there a contract you expect us to sign, and if so, what’s in it?

3. If we try offering lookups through you for a while and decide we don’t want to anymore, how easy is it for us to stop?”

I was thrilled to get this message. First off, it’s hugely gratifying that someone in our target audience has taken the time to seriously consider what we have to offer. Second, the questions they’ve asked tell me they’re giving real thought to what sort of business relationship they want to have with us. In other words, they’ve readily grasped our business concept and they’ve moved on from there to ponder the risks and contingencies of adoption.

Here’s how I answered them.

Suggested Fees

We don’t really have a proposed fee schedule. Our goal is to let providers set the fees that make sense for them (inclusive of all expenses) and let the market take care of things from there. However, as a rule of thumb, we’d like to see most individual document searches come in between $10 and $20. If it’s still worth it to you to do them for less, all the better, but many potential providers have made us aware of the growing costs of copies, gas, parking and just about everything else.

Is there a contract that you want us to sign?

Just the terms of service for the site. Our attorney helped us draft these, and they will likely undergo some changes as more people sign up and various issues arise. Let us know if you have any concerns about any of the things you read there… at this early stage, we would definitely try to respond to any feedback you have regarding our terms.

One thing our terms of use address is the concern that providers might register with the site, attract customers, then encourage those customers to go directly to them and bypass our site. Ultimately we can’t really prevent that, but the terms basically ask that providers not solicit our customers to go elsewhere for lookups. Hopefully that’s not overly constraining for you.

If things don’t work out, how do we discontinue our relationship?

Your society members can simply delete their lookup offerings from the site at any time. We’ll eventually include a “remove my membership” option on the profile page so they can remove their personal info as well.

On a related note, if your members want to offer lookups but need to go “on vacation” for a while occasionally, they can simply change the status of their lookup offering from “active” to “on vacation”. All the info will remain saved, but the lookup offerings won’t appear in users’ search results.

To me, these kinds of interactions with our potential partners are tremendously helpful. One of the most frequent pieces of advice I’ve heard from more experienced entrepreneurs is how important it is to be teachable and willing to adapt and iterate the strategy of a new business in response to customer (and partner) feedback. That’s one of the things I’m really looking forward to being able to do at Genlighten. It looks like the fun is just beginning!

It’s been a heads-down week here at Genlighten.com, with pretty much every spare moment devoted to trying to recruit more genealogy researchers to our lookup provider network. Beginning last Saturday night, we began composing and sending out individual e-mails to around 760 genealogical societies in the US and Canada. Our basic pitch was simple. It boiled down to:

“We’re building an e-commerce platform dedicated to making it simple to offer fee-based genealogy lookups. If your volunteers sign up to provide lookups through our site on behalf of your society, we’ll return 90% of the fees they earn to you. In return for our 10% commission, we’ll handle payment processing, tracking of incoming lookups, communication between client and provider, etc..”

The last of the e-mails went out last night. Here are some stats we’ve gathered thus far:

• Number of messages sent out: 759
• E-mail addresses that bounced: 68
• Societies that weren’t interested: 5
• Societies considering our site: 15

Those numbers definitely tell a story, though I’m not sure yet exactly what it is. Here are some preliminary reactions:

• The bounced addresses all came from sites that I’ve visited within the last several months. Admittedly, some said they hadn’t been updated since 2001(!) so I anticipated plenty of undelivered messages. But it’s still kind of jarring to think that almost 10% of county genealogical sites that currently exist aren’t being actively maintained.
• Several of the societies that wrote back to say they weren’t interested explained, in polite terms, that they were philosophically opposed to charging for lookups as a source of revenue. That’s a sentiment I both understand and respect. Only one message thus far had any hint of “we’re morally above any such thing.”
• Many of the interested respondents indicated that they’d need to consult their society’s board of directors before proceeding. That certainly makes sense. But it hadn’t dawned on me that it might be a while before they would next meet. So perhaps some of those “no response” societies will meet and get back to me over the next month or so.

All in all, I’m cautiously optimistic about these results.  Now that we’ve made an initial effort to inform genealogical societies about our online lookup marketplace, we plan to expand our recruiting efforts to encompass an even broader potential audience.  This coming week, we’ll be reaching out to APG members and other fee-based genealogy researchers who we’ve learned about through exhaustive web searches.  Wish us luck!

A poster on the APG message board last week mentioned that a client was looking for a web-based collaborative genealogy service and asked for recommendations. Requirements included the ability to

• store contact info for living relatives
• produce print-outs displaying relationships, and
• let collaborators edit stored info.

One respondent suggested Darin Lythgoe’s The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding (TNG). I recommended Geni. Several others discussed the merits of WeRelate. It occurred to me today that neither the LDS Church’s New FamilySearch nor Ancestry’s Family Tree had come up at all in the discussion, though both seemed relevant to the requirements listed in the original post.

I can’t claim to be an expert user of any of these web-based services. I’ve explored Geni in some detail and I like what I’ve seen so far. I’ve also begun transferring my own genealogy data from PAF to New FamilySearch. But because I’m trying to be more diligent than I have been in the past in documenting each individual I enter, that process is proceeding quite slowly.

I’ve decided not to let my lack of expertise prevent me from blogging on the subject. I’m interested in all of these services, and I’ll use this post as an excuse to explore them a bit further.

Geni

First, Geni.com. Geni bills itself as a free family tree online. The site has received a lot of praise (well-deserved, I believe) for its simple and intuitive user interface. The initial screen for first-time users presents a minimalist pedigree chart and asks you to enter your own name and e-mail address. You’re then guided to enter your parents (and their e-mail addresses). The emphasis here is not so much on dates and places but on e-mail connections to living relatives. The idea is to let relatives know via e-mail that you’re working on your family tree. They can jump in and contribute additional details and connections themselves.

This is the core of the service, but Geni offers a rich variety of additional features. You can share family photos and add them to detailed profile pages for each person in your tree. Gedcom files can be imported if you’ve already collected a lot of info. Geni will map the location of each of your relatives and ancestors, and create a timeline of events in their lives. You can send virtual gifts, reminders and birthday greetings to living members of your tree. Though the interface has become a bit more cluttered as new features have been added, the site remains pleasant and satisfying to use. What’s more, the site is completely free and has no annoying ads. (The business model may evolve over time.)

The printing capability is basic but produces great-looking results. I’ve heard Geni plans to eventually offer poster-size or frameable print-outs as a possible revenue source. I suspect they’ll do an excellent job when they get that going.

Experienced genealogists won’t find the research and documentation tools at Geni.com that they expect and need, though those capabilities may be offered later.

Geni shines as a particularly fun and simple way for beginners to get started with building their family trees. The site is optimized to make genealogy a tool for social connections among family members. It also offers helpful support forums and a vibrant user community.

Ancestry Family Tree

Ancestry has long allowed users to enter their family tree data on their site without the need to pay for a subscription. In its current incarnation, the tree builder utility is set up to prompt users with ’shaking leaves’ if Ancestry thinks it has info relevant to a particular ancestor. This strikes me as a cute feature that could potentially grow annoying over time, particularly if I wasn’t looking to become a subscriber anytime soon. Ancestry also offers the ability to share information you enter and discover with others, who can sign up to view the site after an e-mail invitation from you. The interface lacks some of the Flash-based bells and whistles that Geni offers, but is nonetheless quite usable.

Where Ancestry’s service particularly shines is in the multi-media elements you can add to enhance your family tree. Photo uploading is supported, as with Geni, but the site also offers a unique audio storytelling service that I find particularly appealing. Basically, you can preserve stories from your living relatives (by interviewing them, even via telephone) or from deceased relatives, by recording them online. I haven’t yet tried it, but this strikes me as a compelling and worthwhile feature. I might be more likely to actually make audio recordings then I would videos (which Ancestry also supports.)

For more serious researchers, the site allows you to enter research notes. But it doesn’t offer a convenient way to organize or annotate source documents in digitized form, which I would find extremely useful.

All-in-all, Ancestry’s offering is full-featured, well-thought out, and provides a convenient (if slightly annoying) gateway to their fee-based research and publishing offerings. For those interested, a much more thorough review than mine was published by Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal back in 2006.

New FamilySearch (NFS)

It’s probably a little early to review this site, since it’s still very much under development and is currently only available to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). It will eventually be made available to the public however, and I’m beginning to use it more and more, so it makes at least some sense for me to consider it here.

NFS’s interface at this point feels substantially heavier and more cluttered than that offered by either Geni or Ancestry. It clearly aims to make a large amount of data and navigation options available on a single page. Whereas with Geni the user can navigate their entire tree almost effortlessly by simply dragging their mouse, NFS requires extensive clicks and page loads to accomplish the same task. Of course, the comparison is somewhat unfair, since NFS’ mandate is considerably more extensive than simply allowing collaborative online family tree management, and its feature set reflects that mandate.

NFS’s ambitious aims include:

• permitting different users to submit conflicting data on the same unique individual
• tapping into the LDS Church’s extensive online databases of genealogical information to allow duplicate entries for the same individual to be combined (and disputed).

As a consequence of this approach, NFS does not create a private “online shoebox” into which users can deposit their personal genealogy data, isolated from that of all other users. Instead, NFS provides a single set of scaffolding intended to potentially encompass the family tree of every individual who has lived. Users affix their data to that scaffolding, then work to address the conflicts that inevitably arise in the process. In this respect, NFS resembles Wikipedia more than it does a traditional genealogy program. It’s entirely possible for you to visit your tree one day, enter data on a new individual you’ve identified, and go back the next day to find that someone you don’t know has combined your entry with a similar but nonetheless different one. Other users can’t edit your submissions, but they can add their own to go right alongside yours. This takes some getting used to.

At this point, NFS does not allow for any multimedia content to be uploaded, though that capability is planned for the future. Simple mapping and timeline displays are offered, though they’re not particularly sophisticated. Extensive source documentation and research notes are supported, however. This feature should gradually become more and more valuable as a tool in resolving disputes that arise over key genealogical details between contributors.

From what I’ve seen so far, NFS’s print capability is fairly rudimentary, enabling only basic reports and charts with few options for customization. This likely reflects FamilySearch’s strategy of relying on third-party software developers (e.g. Ohana Software and Generation Maps) to enhance and build on NFS’ functionality through their compatible offerings.

Unlike Geni, which brings interactions with living relatives front and center, NFS treats living individuals primarily as a bridge to one’s ancestors. Connections with other researchers pursuing your same lines can in theory be made via e-mail, but so far most of the contributors I’ve come across are not accessible in this manner.

NFS offers extensive online tutorials and a great deal of context-sensitive on-screen help. Phone support is also available, though it’s definitely a work in progress.

In summary, NFS aspires to become much more than either Geni, Ancestry, or their competitors. As a result, it lacks their nimble, agile feel, and the resulting user experience seems a little more like work than fun. However, because it will eventually become a key access portal for the LDS Church’s extensive (some would say indispensable) genealogical holdings, it is likely to evolve a great deal over the coming years and will likely improve substantially with time.

Summary

Geni — Strengths

• Appealing, intuitive, flash-based interface — simple and fun to use
• Strong social-networking capabilities for keeping in touch with living relatives
• Supports photo uploading (video coming soon)
• Dynamic and helpful user forum
• Completely free and no ads

Geni — Weaknesses

• Lacks support for research notes, documentation, or source tracking
• Limited printing options (though this is likely to improve soon)
• No convenient access to research databases, images, or other resources

Ancestry Family Tree — Strengths

• Straightforward, familiar interface
• Excellent multimedia capabilities (images, audio, video)
• Support for basic research notes
• Convenient (though expensive) access to extensive research resources and publishing options

Ancestry Family Tree — Weaknesses

• No easy way to organize or annotate research results or documentation
• Though it’s “free” users are constantly offered not-so-free options

New FamilySearch — Strengths

• Collaboration is at the core of the site, not just an add-on feature
• Free integrated access to extensive FamilySearch databases and other resources
• Allows for detailed research notes and source information
• Extensive context-sensitive online help and phone support

New FamilySearch — Weaknesses

• Dense, static feel to pages; link-heavy navigation
• Limited printing capability (though 3rd-party software will provide enhancements)
• No multimedia support (this is planned for a later iteration)
• Collaborative aspects feel more adversarial than supportive; difficult to contact other contributors

This has been a fairly superficial overview based on my admittedly limited experience with these services. Feel free to let me know in the comments what I’ve overlooked or misunderstood. Also, please let me know of your experiences with other comparable sites. Thanks!