Kindo is a family social network enabling the joint work on family trees. In a recent press release, additional support from Ambient Sound Investment was announced. ASI was started by the same people who invented Skype.

For Kindo this is a big step forward because the additional investment will allow them to pursue their expansion strategy into other languages and cultures. On the other hand: the big challenge is still stickiness. How to get users to come back once they have finished their family tree? In any case, I wish lots of success with the future development of Kindo!

There are only a few ways to avoid this advertisements. Firstly, StudiVZ allows to exclude yourself from advertising, but the smarties have hidden this functions well.

Signing off completely and switching to another network is also an option. Facebook has more to offer than StudiVZ because the German network there is growing fast, but at the same time their marketing strategies are just as penetrating.

Kaioo says there are an non-commercial alternative because they will donate all revenues to charity. The problem is: when it comes to functionalit, it is even less satisfying than StudiVZ. For instance, it is impossible to administrate jointly a group in Kaioo – so much said about networking.

Genealogy is a fascinating hobby not only available to the upper classes. Through Internet Archive and Google Search it is fairly easy to contact distant relatives. A few blogs discuss genealogy, such as Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter.

But how to draw a family tree? Bottom-Top starting with me and listing my ancestors? Or Top-Bottom starting with one of my ancestors and listing all his offspring? In the first case, I get a complete lists of all people whose genes I have in my body, in the second case I get a list of people who share some of my genes. In the first case, the siblings of my ancestors are ignored, in the second case the parents and siblings of the partners of offspring.

Family Trees with Web 1.0

Several programs allow creating famility trees (such as Wingeno). With these programs it is possible to visualize family trees from different perspectives. The problem is: somewhere you have to save the file with all connections and only one person can edit the file. With this method, Family Trees develop isolated from each other.

Family Tree are compact social networks: Each relation can be generated via the Parent-Child-Relationship because most peopke have only one biological father and only one biological mother.

Family Trees are ideal for collaborative work Each family member has a set of local knowledge about their relatives. Together we can create a more comprehensive family tree.

One possibility for cooperation is offered by Wikitree, yet the editing of Wikis seems to be a big hurdle for many: even though Wikitree existed since 2005, only 46.262 profiles have been created.

Other platforms are Ancestry.com (Blog, 5 billion entries), OneGreatFamily.com (see comment), Kinjunction, Genesreunited or Myheritage.com (for a comparison see Wallstreet Journal).

Family Tree Social Networks

David Sacks, former Board Member at Paypal and inventor of geni.com wanted to simplify the creation of family trees by using a visual user interface to “create a family tree of the whole world”. The Social Network allows to inviterelatives by email in order to collaborate on the same family tree. More than 10 million profiles have been created on Geni so far.

Geni also receives good reviews in the blogosphere (see Kevin Lim, MaunTech, Jason Unger, Alexis Brion, Web2.0Directory, Stefani Twyford, Whippleworld, TechcoastReview, PeoplesearchDigest, James Seng or Mark Buzinkay).

Can Geni compete with more established firms which can easily copy its functions but have more profiles available? Geni at the moment is estimated to be worth 100 million US-Dollarsgrowing market.

Geni was adapted by Sven Schmidt with the name verwandt.de (related), but it is also available in English at itsourtree.com. Verwandt grows faster then Geni.

Verwandt has received a good press coverage and blog coverage (Robert Basic, Burkhard Schneider, Mike Lima, Volker Hepp, Mark Buzinkay). Verwandt was participant in the competition for the German Start Up of the Year 2007.

A third network follows a similar path: Kindo.com. Kindo is produced by an international team of young software engineers and webdesigners working in London. Even though it started last, it has made quite a wave in the blogosphere (Mutado, Internet-Business, Digital Passports, Mike Stopforth, Josh Lowensohn, Interment, The OpenPress, Xboxservice, Ruben Colomer, Deutsche Startups, Alexander Trust, Silvio Ströver, Comdao, Mark Buzinkay) and in the press.

Advantages and disadvantes of Geni.com, Verwandt.de und Kindo.com

Creating a family tree is very simple: starting with one person you add parents, siblings, kids or partners (see video-tutorial from Kindo).

Since all three networks were created with Flash, the graphics are quite nice. You click on any person in the network and see their ancestors, siblings and offspring. Further branches of the trees are in the background and can be retrieved through clicking on a person.

Additional information can be saved – marriage-, birth- and death-dates which are shown in a calendar. Address data, Photos and much more can be saved for each person. In these general functions, the three social networks barely differ although it is obvious that Verwandt copied directly from Geni while Kindo changed a few things.

Export, Delete, Change

Geni and Verwandt allow export into a gedcom-file, Kindo doesn’t (yet). Neither of them allow to import Gedcom-Files. Geni plans to release a Share-Version for your own website, Facebook or Myspace.

None of the three social networks allow to merge existing familiy treems, but Geni thinks about it.

You cannot delete people which you have invited via email. Also Persons can only be deleted if they are not a knot in the network, in other words if they have only one contact. If you have more than two contacts, first your contacts have to be deleted. The aim is to keep the network intact, but at the same time small mistakes can have a big impact.

Data Security

Everyone working on a family tree can edit and delete profiles – theoretically the whole family tree. The management of editing rights is not satisfactory solved in all three networks.

Another questions remains as well: what happens with the data? Family data is valuable and users should be aware that nothing can prevent the owners of these networks to sell the complete data set – even if they claim that they have no intention to do so.

Circles and Single Parents

Verwandt assigns people to each other without being asked to because it does not consider single parents. At Geni or Kindo Single Parents” are possible.

Complex family relationships are not mapable in Verwandt. Notwithstanding Inbreeding of the Royal Nobility, it is possible to create very simple cases for instance when two sisters marry two brothers. At Geni it is possible to create “Family Cycles”.

Communication and Performance

All three companies have corporate blogs to be in touch with their users. Geni has a forum to discuss errors and bugs. The support of all three companies is quick and effective.

Verwandt and kindo are sometimes a little bit slow – this creates errors. Geni is often faster and has less bugs.

Summary

If you don’t mind English, then use Geni. If you need a German network, then with Verwandt and Kindo you will have platforms which are to some extent sufficient but still have some drawbacks.

A German Version of this Article can be found here

The fomer owner of this social network, Tobias Heine, propably knows that it is not possible to suddenly change a free membership into a paid membership without explicit consent of the users. The little button of consent which pops up after log-in does not even mention the membership fee. I am not sure what happens if the users suddenly find a bill in their mailbox. Some users might be too scared to deny paying the fee or risking a case in court. A short search via Google should help.

Via Augsblog1, Augsblog2, Augsblog3, Deutsche Startups, Fudder, Computerbetrug1 und Computerbetrug 2 (Forum), Protectus, Förderland, Onlinekosten, Suchmaschinenmarketing-Blog, Abzocknews, Region-München, n-tv, Rechtzwei-Null, DSL-Team.

• Global Social Networks are growing.
• Younger Consumers are more receptive to advertising on user-generated content sites.
• Widgets make Facebook a great platform.
• Recipe for Succesful Facebook Apps

Pessimists:

• Social Networks won’t work for business.
• Social Ads won’t work.
• In order to make money, Facebook-Apps would need more users than currently exist on Facebook.
• Facebook-Apps are for children.

Neutral:

• The biggest and most open network wins.
• Pros and Cons of Opening a Social Network
• Facebook needs to buy content from other user-generated platforms.
• Long-Tail distribution of Facebook-Apps

This is is just a short list of articles that I find very illuminating on the whole Facebook-Controversy. More articles are going to be added to this list.

Steve Rubel points to this graph and seems to say: does this feel like a bubble, all this talk about Web 2.0? Maybe it just reflects the fact that HR departments realize that this is important?

Amicably, as Americans are, the conference was very entertaining and a good opportunity to learn about what is “Hot” at the Silicon Valley: Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, User-Generated-Media, Facebook, Data Privacy, Consumer-Media-Applications, Facebook. Oh, and did I mention that we talked about Facebook a lot?

The experts were good. Kara Swisher’s dry humour about how much she is annoyed by Facebook or Reid Hoffman (from LinkedIn) witty about the seven deadly sins working in Social Networks stick to my memory.

Facebook deserves the buzz. But discussions only scratched the surface. It seems to me that real hardcore-information is sometimes hard to get and the experts are reluctant to give it away. How to avoid the problems which scaling a social network involves? How to best organize the user-support? Which features are sticky? What are the essential characteristics of succesful Social Networks? Innovative new ideas? A viral user-base? An appealing design? Or is the random factor very important? How important is data-security? Hans-Peter Brondmo made an interesting remark that we need to look at user-data as an asset that is individually owned, which should be protected from theft but which also could be sold if the user consents to it. Would the users care more about their data if they really own it?

The answer to these questions are more likely to help decide whether there is a Web 2.0 bubble. The question is not whether technology stock prices are too high or companies are bought for incredible sums. The question is not whether there are too many start-ups or too much Venture Capitalists running with the herd.

The last bubble burst because everybody had wrong expectations about the behaviour of people on the Internet. The expectation was that by 2005 everything would be done on the Internet. The question is really: has the behaviour changed enough to change the way money is earned on the Internet?