Family Networking Websites

The January 2009 issue of Internet Genealogy landed in my mailbox on Friday. It contains several informative articles, starting on page 8 with Janice Nickerson, Toronto-based genealogist and colleague on Library and Archives Canada's Services Advisory Board, evaluating sites that offer "an online place to store, develop, share and collaborate on your family tree, while keeping in touch with your relatives."

Janice found 18 such sites, but choose only four to review in any depth. These she evaluated according to the criteria: privacy, matching/merging, individual profiles, multimedia, GEDCOM Compatibility, Trees and Reports, Networking Features, Source Citations, Support, Special Features, and Price.

The only one of her top four picks with which I am at all familiar is Geni.com which she rates as extremely easy to use and comments it is free "so far." At the time Janice wrote the article Geni did not accommodate importing a GEDCOM, a capability now included. She comments that Geni's matching/merging capability limits the amount of privacy you have in your tree.

The top rated site is termed the "most sophisticated, full-featured", but I was struck by how features were mentioned as "takes a little more work", being not clear, or "it appears that."

None of the sites receives a ringing endorsement.