As we prepare to welcome in the new year, we thought it would be fun to reflect on some of the amazing things we have accomplished in the last 12 months. We’re proud of the many exciting new features we introduced this year to help you research your family history. While we all work together to build the largest and most accurate family tree of the world, genealogy research on Geni has never been faster or easier. 

Take a walk down memory lane with us as we reflect on the highlights from 2013!

We kicked off 2013 with a great start by making DNA tests for genealogy available for the first time on Geni.

By partnering with FamilyTree DNA, a global leader in DNA tests specialized for genealogy, we were able to bring you the highest quality DNA testing available on the market. If you’re having trouble breaking through your brick walls, a DNA test can help you identify your direct paternal line (Y-DNA), direct maternal line (mtDNA) and relatives across all lines via autosomal DNA (Family Finder). By taking advantage of this cutting edge technology, you can bring your genealogy into the new millennium and further enhance your family history research.

The MyHeritage & Geni team at RootsTech 2013

In March, we were happy to attend one of the biggest genealogy events of the year, RootsTech in Salt Lake City, Utah. We had a great time at the conference meeting users and getting to know Curator Adam Brown, who spent a lot of time introducing new users to Geni. This was also the first time Geni attended as part of the MyHeritage family. It was a blast to man the booth as a part of this amazing team.

In April, we introduced our most exciting and perhaps most important new feature yet – Record Matches and Smart Matches™ for your family tree! Using MyHeritage’s powerful matching technologies, you can automatically receive matching historical records and newspaper articles to profiles in your family tree on Geni. Best of all, when you confirm a match, the record is automatically linked to your relative’s profile and a source is created to let everyone know where the information originated from. And by matching profiles in your tree with the family trees on MyHeritage, you have a greater chance of discovering new ancestors and relatives that you never knew before. We are incredibly proud of this new feature and believe it is incredibly valuable in helping us realize our goal of building the definitive family tree of the world.

The month of May brought some more exciting new features to your fingertips. We made researching your family history even easier by bringing you greater access to MyHeritage’s SuperSearch™, MyHeritage’s family history search engine for historical records and newspapers. And by adding the “Research this person” link to your relative’s profiles, we’ve made researching your ancestors faster than ever.

In June, we were excited to hit a new milestone in the World Family Tree – 70,000,000 profiles connected! We heard amazing reactions from users who have made many exciting new discoveries through their Record Matches and Smart Matches™, expanding their family’s branches even further. Congratulations to everyone, we couldn’t have done it without you!

In July we introduced an industry first, Value Indicators for Record Matches and Smart Matches™ to make your matches even more useful and save you time in your research. With Value Indicators, you can quickly see which matches will add the most value to your family tree. Now each match describes what new or missing information it may provide to you. This way you can make the best use of your time by going over the matches having the highest value first. We also introduced enhancements to your confirmed matches. A red magnifying glass will appear on a confirmed match if the match contains information that hasn’t been added yet to that profile. Now you can be sure not to miss any important pieces of your family history and get the maximum value from your confirmed matches.

In August, six Geni Curators from around the world – Adam Brown, Randy Schoenberg, Pam Karp, Kevin Hanit, Malka Mysels and Hatte Blejer – flew to Boston to represent Geni at the 33rd IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy. Staffing the Geni booth, the Curators did a fantastic job sharing their knowledge of Geni with conference attendees. Several of them also participated in hosting talks about several ongoing projects on Geni, including the Jewish Genealogical Portal Project and the Jewish Families of Krakow Project.

The following months brought even more value to your matches. If you recall, when we first introduced Record Matches and Smart Matches™ on Geni, we promised that additional historical record collections would be coming in the future. And so, as we made our way into October, our parent company MyHeritage, announced a strategic partnership with leading genealogy organization FamilySearch. The partnership would bring billions of global historical records and family tree profiles spanning hundreds of years to MyHeritage. What did this mean for Geni? These new additions would be made available through your Record Matches and Smart Matches™, bringing you significant new opportunities to grow and enrich your family history.

As we came to the end of 2013, we announced millions of Nordic records from Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland were added to MyHeritage’s burgeoning collection of historical records. These new records are matched automatically to your Geni profiles and available through your Record Matches and SuperSearch™. With more and more historical records added to the tree everyday, Geni’s Word Family Tree is quickly becoming an even better reference family tree for the whole world.

This was a very exciting year at Geni that brought many valuable resources to your finger tips. We’re thrilled to continue working on enhancing collaboration and bringing you more tools to facilitate your family history research and further grow the World Family Tree.

We’re proud of what we have achieved this year and we look forward to sharing with you what’s in store for 2014!

Happy New Year!