There has been some discussion recently among fellow genea-bloggers about using online genealogy databases. Randy at Genea-Musings and Denise at Family Matters both use WeRelate, which calls itself "the world's largest genealogy wiki."
I haven't tried WeRelate, but have instead been using Geni.
Why Geni? No reason, really, except that I saw it first.
I learned of Geni last June at the Southern California Genealogical Society's Jamboree. A couple of guys from Geni had a table in the Exhibit Room, and their big-screen display happened to catch the eye of my computer engineer husband.
Plus, their nifty brochure featuring Brad Pitt's (presumed) family tree caught my eye, so I told my husband that I'd try it out.
The first thing I noticed was that Geni did not allow you to upload a GEDCOM. This was extremely frustrating, especially for those of us with thousands of names in our databases. The thought of entering information for each ancestor individually was mind-numbing.
Geni users kept asking (wishing?) for a GEDCOM upload. Geni kept saying, "Be patient - it's coming!"
Ok, fine. I don't really consider myself a patient person, but I liked many of Geni's features, so I was willing to hang in there. For a while.
After all, my family enjoyed seeing the gazillion photos of my daughter that I'd already posted. And a few of us were already collaborating and sharing what we knew about various ancestors.
My very favorite feature? The birthday/anniversary/special occasion reminders that nudge me via email. This could only be improved if a hand came out of my computer and tapped me on the shoulder. Repeatedly.
I've found Geni to be kind of like a cross between MySpace, Flickr, and a regular genealogy database (and yes, I use all three).
Well, patience has finally paid off... sort of. Geni announced today on its Blog and via Twitter that GEDCOMs with up to 5,000 names can now be imported.
This is good news for new users, or users who have only posted a small tree.
It's not such good news for users (like myself) who have already painstakingly entered many names and photos:
Please Note: Importing a GEDCOM will create a new Geni Tree. If you already have a Geni account you must use a different email address for this import. This will start a new Tree which will not be merged into your existing Tree. We plan to enable GEDCOM Import into existing Trees in the future.Visions of GEDCOM-mergers-past gone bad keep dancing through my head...
So... it seems that I may be exercising my patience a bit longer. We'll see. If I get brave and give the merger thing a try, I'll let you know how it goes. And please do the same for me, if you're a Geni user. I'd love to hear your success story!
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