Hellotree: use those family tags to beat Geni

Written on May 7, 2008 – 12:47 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Genealogy service Geni has some competition: Hellotree. This is a place where you and your family can build a family tree and keep each other up to date by sending private messages. Moreover, there’s also room for nostalgics, as you can post archive photos of those good ol’ summer days in the family garden.

Hellotree: get your family beyond tags and in a tree

The flash tree is pure eye candy and grows as you and your family members invite more relatives. Though I think it’s not enough, as Geni is HUGE. They have over 15 million profiles and are the definite market leader in this social media area. If Hellotree wants to build an audience like that, they should work on the integration of existing social networks. I mean, they already have the typical Web 2.0 appearance with all the gradients and big fonts. So why not offering all those Flickr addicts to take it beyond the ‘family’ tag?

Family tag on Flickr

If the API’s of services that have a family distinction in contacts support this, Hellotree might have found an angle to become a serious competitor of Geni. With a few clicks, people can already have their Flickr photos and MyBlogLog blogs included in their profile. Work on that, team from Hellotree, and a forest of family trees may lie ahead of you.

[via eHub]

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API, family, family tree, geni, hellotree, social networks

About the author: Ernst-Jan is blogger and co-organizer of BLOG08, who previously worked in New York to cover news at the United Nations. Next to writing, he's also a singer in the band Christina Five. Follow him on Twitter or read his personal blog Dutchproblogger.com .

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4 comments/trackbacks to “Hellotree: use those family tags to beat Geni”

May 8, 2008: Pages tagged "the appeal"
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By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on May 7, 2008

I use Geni and its viral appeal is incredible. I added maybe 6 people (parents, girlfriend, children, sister) and within a few days my network grew to 83 people in my family alone! A few uncles spend hours a day adding people and expanding our family tree.

But here is the catch: once your family is in there you are basically done. I haven’t visited the service in months. My question is what will get people back to the service after a while…

[Reply]
By Meryn Stol on May 7, 2008

There’s also Kindo: http://kindo.com/
I never tried it though.

[Reply]
By Peter on Jan 1, 2009

I went through a lull in Geni, much like Boris did. But it’s becoming more and more like a social networking site for family. Once I started adding photos, family members came out of the woodwork, adding their own photos and such.

(Adding photos would be easier if they integrated with Flickr, but I assume they’re working on it.)

[Reply]

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