Building the "Big Tree"

Recently, when we introduced Curators, we noted that Geni's mission is to create a shared family tree that connects all of our users. We wanted to share a little bit more about what this vision means and how we are going to get there.

For centuries, people have studied their family history in order to document their ancestors and find new relatives. However, there has never been a great way to share the results of this research with relatives, or collaborate together with others researching common relatives. As a result, the same ancestors are researched over and over again, often from scratch. By combining this research into a single tree that everyone can work on together, users can focus on verifying information and on new avenues of research, rather than spend their time duplicating research that somebody else has already done.

Because users start with their own tree when they first join Geni, they often add relatives that are already part of other Geni trees. All of these duplicates must be merged together to create the one shared tree that we are working towards. Over 45 million profiles have already been linked together on Geni into what is known as the "Big Tree".

In order to help accomplish this goal, Curators can now merge together public profiles that are in different trees. Public profiles are distant relatives and ancestors (your third great grandparents and beyond) shared by many users. As public profiles you're connected to are merged with their duplicates, you'll instantly benefit from other users' research, and maybe even meet some new distant cousins.

As always, we take the privacy of your close relatives very seriously. Profiles for close relatives that you've added to Geni are private, which means that only you and your family can view these profiles. Only your close relatives can merge your private profiles, and even if your tree is merged with another tree, your close relatives will remain private to you and your family.

A few more things:

• You can always export your tree as a GEDCOM file if you'd like to keep a local copy
• For more on profile privacy, see our Understanding Privacy on Geni page
• If you have any other questions or concerns about this, please let us know at help@geni.com

Enhanced following privacy

A few weeks ago we introduced following, a great way to control your notifications and keep track of the users, profiles, and now projects you're interested in.

Although following does not have any privacy implications (you don't gain any additional access to profile information by following a profile), some users were not comfortable with people they don't know following their close relatives.

Even though this did not in any way violate the privacy of these profiles, we take privacy very seriously and want to make sure that our users are comfortable adding private profiles of their close relatives.

As of today, we no longer allow strangers to follow private profiles. A private profile can now only be followed by a close relative. Over the next few days, we'll be removing all followers from private profiles that aren't close relatives.

Thank you all for your feedback on this feature, and please keep it coming so we can continue to meet your privacy expectations.

 

 

Project Enhancements

Projects were first introduced a couple of weeks ago as a way to organize groups of profiles, usually around a specific family, surname, place or event. Users have found some really interesting uses for projects, and almost 200 projects have already been created. Today we're introducing the following enhancements to projects:

 

Project Discussions

Every project now has its own list of discussions. Use the Project Discussions link to view a list of threads related to that project, or start your own. This is a great way to have discussions specifically related to the project and project profiles. Don't forget to follow discussions that you're interested in to receive notifications of replies.

 

Following Projects

Use the Follow button to follow projects that you're interested in.

You'll receive updates on your home page when the project is updated, when profiles are added, or when someone starts a new project discussion. This is a great way to get started on projects. You can follow as many projects as you want, so look through the list of projects for a few that interest you. And if you don't find any that interest you - go ahead and start your own!

 

Adding profiles to projects

Now you can add any public profile you can edit to any of your projects. Use the "Add to project" link from a profile's "More Actions" menu to add the profile to a project. Make sure you follow the project first so it will appear on your list of projects. Before you add a profile to a project, make sure that it belongs in that project. Usually the main project page will make the scope of the project clear.

Please note that user who collaborate on the project will be able to edit and merge any profiles you add to the project.

View the list of Projects

 

Introducing Projects (now for everyone)

A few weeks ago we introduced Projects, a way for Geni Curators to create collections of profiles. Some great projects have been created, from "Mayflower" Passengers and US Civil War Notables, to Extraordinary Women of the Middle Ages and Early Normans c.790-1066. Today we're opening up projects to all users.

Before you start a new project, please review the list of current projects to make sure that there isn't already a similar project. You can also check a few of the main profiles related to the project to see what projects they are already a part of. If there is a already a project similar to one you wanted to create, please send a message to the project manager requesting to join the project.

When you create a new project, you are the manager of the project. As manager, you can add project collaborators and project profiles.

Users you add as project collaborators gain edit and merge permission on all project profiles. You should only add users as project collaborators if they have specific interest in the project area and have a good reputation as a Geni user. Project collaborators can add profiles they manage to a project.

As the project manager, you can also add profiles you manage to a project. Keep in mind that all project collaborators on that project will be able to edit and merge any profiles you add to the project.

As a project manager or collaborator you will have access to a project merge center. This is just like your merge center, but only includes profiles that are part of the project. This is a great way to work on cleaning up a group of related profiles.

Finally, keep in mind that all projects are public. Anyone can view the project page, the list of profile profiles, and project collaborators. Therefore, only public profiles can be added to a project.

View Projects

Introducing Following

Today we're introducing following, a new way to organize the profiles that interest you, control your notifications, and invite people you know to Geni.

Following a profile is as easy as clicking the follow button.

Click it again to unfollow the profile. Following a profile does a few things:

1. You'll receive updates about the profile on your home page.
2. You'll be added to the list of followers on the profile - this is a great way to find other users interested in the same profiles.
3. The profile will be added to your auto-suggest list, so you can easily find profiles you follow in search, and tag them in documents, discussions, and more.

Note: Following does not affect privacy in any way. Following a user or profile does not give you any additional access to profile information. A user who follows you does not get any additional access to your profile or other information.

If you follow a user or profile that is not in your Family group, you will only receive public updates about them. You will not be able to view their photos, family discussions, or other private information and updates.

As part of this change, we have simplified your profile privacy. There are now two columns - private and public. Profile information you mark as private can only be viewed by users in your Family group. Public information can be viewed by anyone else. You can choose whether or not your Family can view your email address from your permissions settings.

For the small number of users that have used our Friends and Bookmark features, following replaces these features. We have automatically converted your friends to users you follow, and you are now following any profiles you bookmarked.

Find people to follow now

Merging Enhancements

As your tree grows and merges with other trees, you may find some profiles in your tree that have duplicates in their immediate family. For example, when you merge two profiles that each have a complete set of kids, you'll need to merge the kids together. In these cases, you should use the resolve duplicates option under the node's more menu to quickly merge them.

We've made some changes to this process. After you drag duplicate nodes on each other, click the merge duplicates button. We'll show you each pair of profiles so you can approve or undo the merge right away, before returning to the tree. This will help you clean up that profile's immediate family before moving on to other parts of the tree.

On the page where you can drag immediate family duplicates on each other, nodes within each section are now listed alphabetically to make it easier to find duplicates. Also, the profile you are resolving duplicates for now also appears on this page, so you can merge it with siblings if necessary.

Note that these changes also apply when resolving parent and partner conflicts.

Introducing the Enhanced Profile

Today we're rolling out an enhanced version of the profile page to all users. After weeks of testing various versions with a small group of users, we're ready to share the latest version with all of our users. The cosmetic changes, outlined below, make it easier to find the information you're looking for on a person's profile.

Here is an overview of what changed:

Basics

• Immediate Family can now be collapsed or expanded.
• Nicknames and Occupation have been moved down to the Personal module of the Overview tab.
• Email has been moved down to the Contact module of the Overview tab.

Overview tab

• Photos, Videos, and Documents are part of the new Media tab.
• Friends and Collaborators are part of the new Activity tab.
• Some Statistics have been moved to User Statistics on the new Activity tab.

Info tab

• The info tab has been removed.
• Personal and Contact modules are now part of the Overview tab.
• Education and Work History can be found on the profile's Timeline.
• Favorites have been removed. You can still find the information on the Favorites tab when you edit the profile, but eventually this information will be removed altogether, so please copy it if you would like a record.

Activity Tab

This new tab only appears on user profiles and includes Recent Activity, User Statistics, Collaborators, and Friends.

Media Tab

This new tab gives you one place to view photos, videos, and documents of this person.

We hope you like these enhancements. You can see them yourself by viewing your profile.

Building our shared family tree

"Our mission is to solve the problem of genealogy (the question of how everyone is related) by creating a family tree of the whole world." - Geni CEO David Sacks, January 12, 2007, days before Geni launched to the public.

The goal of Geni has always been to create a shared family tree, so our users around the world can meet new cousins and discover how they relate to historical figures and celebrities. Recently we've taken some steps that have moved us significantly towards this goal.

First, we introduced the new Merge Center, a package of enhancements designed to make merging faster and easier. Since we released the Merge Center, the number of profiles merged every week has almost doubled, and continues to grow.

Then we introduced Curators, a group of users selected by the Geni community to improve and maintain the accuracy of the historical parts of the shared tree. Curators are able to merge and update any public profile. This small group has spent countless hours correcting mistakes and consolidating duplicate branches of the shared tree.

Today we are announcing the next step towards our goal of creating the single most accurate and comprehensive family tree anywhere - Master Profiles. A Master Profile is the standard profile for a given person. Over time, as our Curators and other Geni users continue their work, you will find that Master Profiles are the most comprehensive and accurate profiles for each person. Other profiles for the same person are secondary and should eventually be merged into the Master Profile.

So what does this mean for you? Over the next few months, you should notice the benefits from these and other projects we are working on. The historical parts of your tree will continue to improve in accuracy and completeness. If you are actively working on your tree, please continue to do so. If everyone works on their part of the tree, we'll all have a rich, shared family tree before we know it.

If you aren't yet part of the "big tree" of over 45 Million profiles, keep checking your Merge Center for new Tree Matches and Profile Merges that may connect you. And if you're looking to get more engaged in the Geni community, Public Discussions are a great place to start.

New Features and Enhancements

We just released the following updates:

Single field date entry

This has been available as an option in tree preferences for some time. We have made it the default way to enter dates in the tree. Instead of dropdown menus, you can enter the date naturally as "January 7th" or "1/7/2010" and so on. You can choose the old way of entering dates in your tree preferences if you prefer. International date formats are also available.

View All Merges

Use the View All Merges button at the bottom of your list of Profile Merges to cycle through all of your Profile Merge issues. No need to select which profiles you want to compare, just click the button and go!

Bug fixes & Enhancements 

1. Curators are now indicated by an icon on their profile.
2. We now remember the sort order you've selected in the merge center.
3. Family Tree Name has been moved from Family preferences to Name preferences.
4. As requested, GEDCOM exports no longer include guestbook comments.
5. The default for public discussions is now to show all public discussions. Use the filter to show only discussions you are following.

New Enhancements: User profiles, Removing relationships, and more!

Geni users are increasingly working together to merge their common ancestors and find new relatives. We've made a couple of changes to make it easier to find and communicate with other users. 

First, a user's public activity, such as adding a public document or editing a public profile, will always appear in their recent activity. You will only see private activity, such as uploading a private photo, if you are in the user's Family. This way you can get a better idea of how active the user has been and what they are working on in the public tree. Family News stories are also either public and private, and you can filter your Family News to show only public or private stories.

Second, you can now leave public guestbook comments for users outside your Family group. These comments can be viewed by any users. Look for the Public/Private toggle next to the Leave Message button. Note that you can only leave a Public message in the guestbook of a user outside of your Family group.

For our power users active in merging the big tree, we've made it easier to remove incorrect relationships from profiles. You'll notice checkboxes next to each relationship in the relationship list. Use the checkboxes to remove multiple relationships at one time, without waiting for the page to reload. You can also remove relationships from the relationships tab of the edit profile page, so you no longer have to go to the tree. These changes will make it faster for you to remove incorrect relationships.

Finally, we're testing a new profile layout with some users. If you are one of the randomly selected users, you'll notice that some profile modules have been moved around to make a cleaner profile. Depending on the feedback, we hope to roll out this new profile to all users soon.

Other changes:

1. Use the new change birth order option in the more menu on tree nodes to quickly change the birth order for a profile and all of it siblings.
   
2. You can now edit the metadata of public documents owned by your collaborators.
3. The immediate family on compare profiles pages are now alpha sorted.

4. The timestamp on individual discussion posts is now a link directly to that post. This makes it easier to share specific posts with others.

Site Maintenance

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Site Maintenance

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Update: We're back! 2 PM PST - The update took longer than anticipated. Thanks for your patience.

Site Maintenance: We'll be right back!

We've had an unexpected issue. We're working on bringing the site back as soon as possible. We'll update this post once we're back. Thanks for your patience. 10:15 AM PST

Find relationships between famous relatives

Earlier this month we announced that we were giving all users access to enhanced relationship paths for the month of August. Last week we showed you how to find famous relatives in three easy steps. But what if you want to see if two notable figures, such as Barack Obama and James Madison, are related to each other? Here's how to find the relationship between two profiles:

1. Click the green thumbtack on the top right of the first profile (to the right of "You are connected to...")
2. Click the "How are they related? button on the second profile
3. Look for the green notification strip once we've found the relationship

It's that easy! The result will look something like this: President James Madison is President Barack Obama's third cousin 8 times removed!

You can use this to find relationships between any two profiles on Geni (that you have permission to view). Don't forget to click the thumbtack again when you are done to set our relationship calculator back to your profile.

View famous profiles now

Do you have famous relatives?

August is free relationship path month here at Geni. This means that you can find relationship paths to very distant relatives. If you are part of our big tree, there is a good chance that you have some famous relatives. Here's three easy steps to find your famous relatives:

1. Go to our list of popular profiles
2. Click on the name of a profile you find interesting (I'm going to see if I'm related to Steve Martin)
3. Click the "How are you related?" button on the top of their profile

We'll start looking for a relationship path to them. You can go back to the popular profiles page and look for more famous relatives while we look for a path. If we find a relationship (it may take a few minutes), you'll see a notification at the top of the page.

Click to view a full page view of your relationship to your famous relative. Use the links at the bottom to let your friends on twitter and facebook know about your new relative. They'll see a page just like this one:

Note that you will only see the "How are you related?" button if you are connected to the profile you are viewing. If you are not yet part of the big tree, you can look for possible connections in your Merge Center.

Find your famous relatives.

New Feature: Merge Center

The ultimate goal of Geni is to create a single, accurate family tree that connects all of our users. A family tree is only accurate when there is a single profile for each person on the tree. When more than one user adds a common relative to the tree, we let them merge the profiles together to create a single profile for that relative.

Today we're announcing a number of enhancements designed to make it easier to find and merge duplicate profiles in the tree.

Merge Center

The Merge Center, which you'll find under your More menu, replaces your tree matches list, your merge issues list, and merge requests. There are four tabs:

 

• Tree Matches - Duplicate profiles that we have found by applying our tree match technology across our entire database of 90 million profiles. Review the matches to add new branches to your tree.
• Profile Merges - Duplicate profiles found by other users. View the pending merge to verify that they are the same and complete the merge.
• Tree Conflicts - Profiles that have potential duplicates in their immediate family, such as multiple sets of parents. View the tree to resolve these duplicates.
• Data Conflicts - These profiles have been merged and have more than one set of data that conflicts. View the profile to resolve the conflicts.

By default your merge center includes your close relatives and profiles you manage. You can include profiles managed by your collaborators if you'd like. Once you have approved a merge on a profile managed by a collaborator, it will disappear from your profile merges list. 

You may notice an increase in your number of merge issues. There are a few reasons for this:

• All profiles you manage are now included. Previously the list only included profiles where you were the primary manager.
• Each pair of profiles in a pending merge is now listed separately. This means that if there are two profiles waiting to be merged into a profile you manage, you'll see two separate merge issues.
• All requested merges are now included in your merge issues list, including requests from lists of tree matches.

In essence, the number of merges hasn't really changed, they are just all in one place now so you can resolve them more quickly. We expect that, over time, the number of merge issues will decrease dramatically as a result.

Requesting Merges

The merging process has also been streamlined. You no longer need to choose a recipient when requesting a merge. Now you simply approve (or undo) the merge and we take care of the rest. 

What happens when you approve a merge? If you have permission on both profiles, the merge is completed immediately. Otherwise, a couple of things happen:

• A merge notification email is sent to the profile's managers. Note: Each user will receive, at most, one merge notification per day.
• The profile is added to the profile merge list of all of the profile's managers (and, optionally, their collaborators) so they can review and approve the merge.

Suggested Collaborators

If you're requesting merges on multiple profiles managed by the same user, you may want to invite that user to be a collaborator. Send collaboration requests to these users from your list of Suggested Collaborators, found on your Collaborators page. If a user accepts your collaboration request, you will be able to complete merges on their public profiles without their assistance. 

We hope that these enhancements make it easier to merge duplicate profiles and improve the quality of the tree. Go ahead and try the new Merge Center now and let us know what you think.

Visit your Merge Center now.