encounter sound

I started a family tree for my fam at Geni a couple of weeks ago with the 30 or so relatives closest to me and now we’re up to almost 200! It’s a great service, and has TONS of potential (the least of which is not that it tells you when someone’s birthday is coming up!) There’s a number of things I’d like to see implemented that seem (to me) to be essential to “make it” past the initial “sign up and invite all your family” stage. I want to be able to talk to my relatives, let them know what’s going on in my life, and do it simply and easily. I of course also want to hear what they’re up to as well. Here’s the letter I wrote to the support staff today:

We’re loving Geni! Our family is quickly growing, and it’s neat to see some people that I haven’t seen since family reunions. I have a suggestion, though. It would be great if 2 things could be implemented:

Better Discussions: Allow topics that anyone related to the topic originator can reply to. You could possibly even allow restricting based on how close they’re related, if they’re related via your spouse, etc. The kind of catch-all guestbook type “Discussion” feature isn’t really good enough to have a REAL discussion!

Family Updates/Newsletters: A simple way to let everyone know what you’re doing. Something like a blog, but not really. Even if it were just providing a random e-mail address to users that automatically went out to all their relatives.

Thanks for the great service, and thanks for listening!

Ryan