News

We're doing a bit of post-release maintenance. We should be back up in a few minutes. Update 7:54 PM: We're back.

Geni Pro members can discover their exact relationship to any blood relative on Geni with new Enhanced Relationship Paths. For less than $5 a month Geni Pro members enjoy these benefits: Enhanced Relationship Paths – Discover your exact relationship to any blood relative on Geni. Forest GEDCOM Exports – Export your family tree and all connected trees into a single GEDCOM file (up to 100,000 total individual and family records). Priority Support – Geni Pro… Read the full story

Holidays are a great time to get in touch with your family and let them know how much they mean to you. To help you reach out to your family during the holidays, we’ve added a number of the most popular holidays to your calendar. We’ve also created special gifts for each upcoming holiday that you can send to your family. Look for the holiday reminders at the top of your Family News: Send a… Read the full story

UPDATE: We're back. We're performing a little maintenance right now, we'll be back very soon.

UPDATE: We're back, thanks for your patience. UPDATE: We are still looking into the issue, I'll keep this post updated. We've taken Geni.com down for a few minutes. It should be back up momentarily.

Geni is a collaborative tool that you and your family can use to build a common family history. With the new Find Your Family feature, you can quickly get your family on Geni to help you build your tree and create a scrapbook of your lives, even if you aren’t sure exactly how they are related. Find Your Family The easiest way to find family members on Geni is to search your address book. You… Read the full story

Thanks to everyone who nominated Geni for an Open Web Award, Geni is a finalist in the Social Networking Applications category. Voting for the awards is now open, and you can cast one vote per Category per E-mail Address Per Day. Mashable Open Web Awards

Update: Everything should be back to normal again. We're performing some site maintenance, so Geni.com may be temporarily unavailable for the next few minutes. We'll keep this post updated.

We've added a selection of new gifts that you can send to your family, including special gifts for weddings, anniversaries, and birthdays. Here are some of the new additions:     Send a gift now

Update: We're back. We should be back in just a few minutes.

  Whether it is their birthday, anniversary, or "just because", sending a virtual gift is a great way to show someone that you care. We've given each user three free gift credits to try out our our new, enhanced virtual gifts: Expanded Gift Selection: We've completely revised our gifts, with higher quality graphics and a better selection than ever. We'll add more gifts in the future to help your family celebrate holidays and other special… Read the full story

Update: We're back. Please bear with us as we fix some technical difficulties on the Geni website. We should be back momentarily.

Update: GEDCOM Import/Export is now working again. The GEDCOM Import/Export feature is temporarily disabled this morning. We expect it to be back online later this morning, and will update this post when it has returned.

Finding and staying in touch with your family on Geni is easier than ever with these recent enhancements: Privacy Geni protects the privacy of your information by restricting who can see your profile. By default, only your Family Group and your Family’s Family can see your profile: Your Family Group: These are the people you actively follow on Geni — in your Family Newsfeed, Family Photos and Videos, and Family Calendar. By default it consists… Read the full story

Family News Filter Select the types of stories you see in your Family News with the new story-type filter. Want to only see upcoming birthday and anniversaries? You can do it. Just photos, videos, and gifts? Yep, no problem! Video Your family videos on Geni now have date, location, and description fields. Photos also get the new description field. Tree Preferences Use the new "Open profiles in new window" to keep your tree in one… Read the full story

We are giving Geni.com a quick tune-up, we’ll be back in a few minutes. We’ll update this post when we are back. Stay tuned!

Come join The Geni Team at the Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference. This year the conference is being held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – September 3-6, 2008. If you are going to be in the area during those dates we would love to see you.                               The Federation of Genealogical Societies links the genealogical community by: serving the needs of its member societies providing products and services… Read the full story

Geni will be offline at 6:30pm pst (in about 15 minues). We should only be offline for a few minutes. We’ll be back real soon! UPDATE: We are back!

Google has recently created a way for people to write and publish articles, which they call Knols. The Knol project is a site that hosts many knols — units of knowledge — written about various subjects. The authors of the knols can take credit for their writing, provide credentials, and elicit peer reviews and comments. Users can provide feedback, comments, related information. So the Knol project is a platform for sharing information, with multiple cues… Read the full story

We recently released a number of new features and we are interested in what you think of them. Let us know by taking our new poll. What’s Your Favorite New Feature? ( polls)

Do you have a collection of family videos sitting on a shelf? Do you use a webcam to chat with distant relatives? Videos are a great way to capture special events and communicate with your family, but until now, they’ve been hard to organize and share. From baby’s first steps to wedding anniversaries, from family reunions to family interviews, now you can use Geni to organize and share your family videos. Geni’s new video feature… Read the full story

When you invite someone to your tree who is already part of another tree on Geni, they can now choose to merge their profiles into one profile. Once these profiles have been merged, they can use Geni’s conflict resolution tools to merge any other nodes that were duplicated on each tree, creating one family tree that is more complete and accurate than the individual trees. Because Geni is a collaborative environment, everyone in your family… Read the full story

Anniversary Reminders With Anniversary Reminders you’ll never forget to congratulate your family on an anniversary again. One week before the anniversary, we’ll send you a reminder to leave a special anniversary greeting. Your message will appear on the profiles of both spouses on the special day along with a special anniversary icon. Make sure you add your wedding date to your profile so your family can send you their wishes on your special day! Add… Read the full story

Looks like we will be hosting a get-together with users in Chicago. We are working on a Meet Up outside of the show so that those who can make it to Chicago but will not be attending the show can join the Geni team. Please send your RSVP to community@geni.com so that we can plan on how much food to order. Also please include your t-shirt size and telephone number so that we can reconfirm… Read the full story

The 28th Annual International  Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies , Chicago August 17-22, 2008           Meet Adam, Alan, Ilya and JoAnne at IAJGS You can register here. We will not be at the conference the entire time but we will be there from Sunday, Aug 17th through Tuesday, Aug 18th so if you are in the area please stop by the exhibit hall to say hi. Note the exhibit hall is open until… Read the full story

Geni.com will be offline for about 15 minutes. We’ll be right back! UPDATE: We’re back!

The September 2008 issue of Family Tree Magazine named Geni.com to it’s list of 101 Best Websites for 2008.                                                                                            "An alternative to investing in shrink-wrapped software, Geni was picked by PC Magazine as one of the best free online applications of any kind…You now can… Read the full story

Our friend Matthew Poe recently interviewed JoAnne Rockower, our Director of Community, at the recent SCGS Jamboree. You can view the video below courtesy of Roots Television.

Geni.com will be unavailable for about 10-15 minutes starting at around 9:45 PM PST. This maintenance task should take around 20 minutes, and Geni is scheduled to be back online shortly after 10:00 PST. This blog entry will be updated with further information. UPDATE: We are back! Thanks for your patience.

The weather was hot in Burbank, Calfiornia, but not as hot as the activities taking place at Jamboree 2008 held June 27-29. The Southern California Genealogy Jamboree, now in its 39th year, has grown into a first class conference for Genealogists. A huge “Thank You” goes out to the So Cal Society that put this show together—it truly ranks among the top genealogy shows in the USA. Another big “Thank You” goes out to those… Read the full story

Geni.com will be unavailable for about 10-15 minutes starting at around 8:30 PM PST. We need to perform some quick maintenance and we should be back very soon! UPDATE: And we are back!

When we initially released our GEDCOM Import feature, users could import GEDCOM files with up to 1,000 people in them. We have been increasing this limit since the initial release, and last night we increased the limit from 5,000 to 15,000. If you have a GEDCOM file with up to 15,000 people you can now use it to start a Geni tree. GEDCOM, an acronym for GEnealogical Data COMmunication, is a specification for exchanging genealogical… Read the full story

Geni has been updated! We just released a number of performance enhancements. Although users who are part of larger trees will notice the greatest improvements, these changes should enhance the experience for all Geni users. NOTE: The first time you visit Geni after this update, we will need to take a moment to prepare your personal data for use. This should only take a few minutes and then you will be on your way! UPDATE:… Read the full story

Time Magazine has named Geni one of the top 50 websites of 2008! Here is what they say about Geni: For an exercise that’s all about family, researching your genealogy can be an oddly lonesome affair, filled with long hours spent sifting through records and making awkward phone calls to far-flung relatives. But Geni turns tree-building into a collaborative effort: the free site gives you the basic tools for diagramming your ancestry, and it also… Read the full story

If you live in Switzerland or France, use Geni (of course you do you’re reading the Geni Blog) and are available to be interviewed for a radio program please contact us at community@geni.com and give us your contact information.

June 27-29, 2008 39th Annual Southern California Genealogy Jamboree Burbank Airport Marriott Hotel and Convention Center Since this show is in our own backyard many Geni Team members will be in attendance–including names that you may recognize from their posts of our Forum. Please stop by our booth 501 &510 to say hi. JoAnne Rockower from the Geni Team will be giving an Introduction to Collaborative Genealogy on Saturday morning from 9:30 – 10:30am.

June is the month that we celebrate Dads and Grads, and we’ve added some new free gifts just for them! Dads This Sunday, June 15th, is Father’s Day in 51 countries around the world. Visit the Father’s Day Gift page to honor the fathers in your life with a personal message and one of these special gifts: Send a Father’s Day greeting to any dad in your tree Grads Do you have any recent or… Read the full story

Geni is looking for a customer service representative to help us serve our growing user base. If you are interested or know anyone who may be, you can find the job description on our jobs blog.

As Geni continues to add additional features, teachers are discovering that Geni is a great tool for students to learn more about themselves and their family through a fun and interactive medium. Sally Goerner, a sixth grade language arts teacher in Longmont, Colorado, describes her experience and those of her students while using Geni. Our sixth grade students are working on a memoir project called, “Writing Your Life.” There are many options available to students… Read the full story

Update: And we are back. Update (11:49PM Pacific): We expect the site to be back in about two more hours. Update: We are now down for maintenance. We don’t expect to be back for a few hours. I’ll keep this thread updated. Update: Looks like we are on for tonight. The site will be down for a few hours around 7PM PT tonight. We plan on performing some maintenance next Tuesday, May 13th, around 7PM… Read the full story

We are excited to announce that you can build your Geni tree from your GEDCOM file! Geni is now the easiest and best way to share your research with your family. Importing your GEDCOM is easy: Go to the GEDCOM Import page. Fill out the form and upload your GEDCOM file. Indicate who you are in your file. You’re done! Geni will import your GEDCOM file and build your tree for you. You can begin… Read the full story

This Sunday, May 11th, is Mother’s Day in the United States. Just in time for the celebration we have added custom gifts to help our user’s show their love for the mothers in their life. Visit the Mother’s Day Gift page to send Mom a message and one of these special gifts: This Sunday we will send the recipient a link to view your gift and message. We hope this helps make the day more… Read the full story

National Genealogical Society Conference Kansas City, Missouri May 14-17,  2008 Are you going to the NGS Conference this month?  Come visit the Geni Team at booth #225.  We’d love to meet you there and hear your Geni stories, suggestions for our site, show you our latest features or just chat with you.  

We recently released a number of new features and we are interested in what you think of them. Let us know by taking our new poll. <a href ="http://answers.polldaddy.com/poll/545037/" >What is your favorite new feature on Geni?</a>  <br/> <span style="font-size:9px;"> (<a href ="http://www.polldaddy.com">  surveys</a>)</span>

You may notice a reduction in the number of people in your User Stats and Tree counts. This is due to recent changes in terminology. "People in My Blood Tree" (the number of your blood relatives and all of their partners) has replaced the "People in My Tree" (the total number of people you are connected to on Geni). All of the profiles and people that we used to include in your ‘Tree’ count are… Read the full story

UPDATE (2:35PM PT / 9:35PM GMT): We’re back, hopefully for good! UPDATE (8:25PM GMT): Looks like the site will be down for at least two hours. I’ll keep you all updated. We need to take the site down for some emergency maintenance. We’ll be back soon!

Family Timeline You can now view your complete family history with the new Timeline tab. The Family Timeline displays all of your Family’s events on one timeline to easily visualize the significant events in the lives of those most important to you. Use the Date Range, People, and Event Type filters to see how your paternal and maternal grandparent’s lives overlapped, what your family did from 1920-1928, and more! View your Family timeline Calendar Events… Read the full story

Post a Link Use Post a Link to easily share a link to any web page, such as an interesting news article, favorite website, or a YouTube video, with your Family. You can also post a link to a source such as a census record or grave image and add it to a relative’s profile. Posting a link is as simple as adding the URL to the Post a Link field on your Home page… Read the full story

‘Identify People’ in Photos Click the ‘Identify People’ button and then click on a person in a photo to tag them in place and identify who is who. When others view that photo, they will see the name of each person as they mouse over them in the photo. This is especially useful for large group shots such as weddings and family reunions. View your photos Invite Enhancements Because you have more fun when your… Read the full story

UPDATE (11:05PM GMT): We’re getting closer. We are hoping it will only be about one more hour. Stay tuned! UPDATE (7:25PM GMT): We have decided that it is more effective to take the site down completely to finish the work we are doing as quickly as possible. It may be a few hours before the site is back, I’ll keep you updated. In the mean time, why don’t you visit our Forums and meet some… Read the full story