Genealogy social networks revisited

Just arrived in my mailbox is the June/July issue of Internet Genealogy with an article "Get Involved in WikiTree!" by Elyse Doerflinger. Back in February when I last looked at genealogy social networks that site didn't come to my attention. That was an oversight. According to Alexa it now ranks fifth.

Here are the top five Alexa rankings as of 24 May, 2011

My Heritage, which ranked 3,363 overall still leads the field but has dropped to 4,737
Geni, which ranked 7,498 has slipped to 7,523
Family Link, which ranked 34,888 has risen to 23,643
Genes Reunited which ranked 37, 542 has fallen to 53,542
WikiTree now ranks 293,434

Of the sites listed as "other" in February Efamily has dropped from 925,314 to 1,054,869 while the others have all increased slightly in Alexa rank. http://www.cyndislist.com/socialnetworking.htm has additional sites that rank in the other category, including several with dead links.

One of the absolute musts on a social networking site should be the ability to protect the integrity of your data. You don't want your carefully researched family tree ruined by someone with more enthusiasm than evidence, or who is just malicious. I liked that WikiTree, which is free and advertiser supported, provides for granting graduated levels of access to your data. By contrast, during a recent webinar I learned that there is no such protection for a Geni database although its coming.