{"id":102601,"date":"2018-12-26T05:00:18","date_gmt":"2018-12-26T12:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/?p=102601"},"modified":"2018-12-22T16:14:02","modified_gmt":"2018-12-22T23:14:02","slug":"year-in-review-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/year-in-review-2018-102601.html","title":{"rendered":"Year in Review: 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the year comes to close, we’re taking a look back at some of the amazing things that happened at Geni. This year an amazing 50,000 family trees connected to\u00a0Geni’s World Family Tree<\/a>, helping to bring the total number of profiles in the World Family Tree to nearly 130 million people! From new improvements to our long-awaited HTML version of the tree to the release of two-factor authentication to\u00a0better secure your Geni accounts to the many genealogy conferences at home and abroad, we’ve had a busy year!<\/p>\n

Here’s a look back at 2018 on Geni:<\/p>\n

\"Year<\/a><\/p>\n

The year started off with a great introductory webinar by Geni curator Randy Schoenberg<\/a> for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.\u00a0The webinar was very well received and people were\u00a0eager to learn more about connecting to the World Family Tree.<\/p>\n

\"introGeni<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the best parts of being connected to Geni’s World Family Tree<\/a> is the ability to see how you’re related to any of the other 128 million people also connected. In February, right before we headed\u00a0off to RootsTech in Salt Lake City, Utah, we released the Geni\u00a0Pathfinder<\/a>, a\u00a0handy tool easily discover how you\u2019re related to the people you meet at genealogy conferences, family reunions, or anywhere else right on your mobile device.<\/p>\n

\"pathfinder\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Early 2018 also\u00a0saw Geni in the news after research based on Geni\u2019s World Family Tree was featured in the prestigious academic journal, <\/a>Science<\/a>.<\/em> The paper was published by the science team at Geni’s parent company, MyHeritage, and was led\u00a0by Dr. Yaniv Erlich, MyHeritage’s Chief Science Officer. The study, conducted with scientists at Columbia University, the New York Genome Center, MIT, and Harvard, provided fresh insights into the last couple of centuries of marriage and migration in Europe and North America, and the role of genes in longevity. The groundbreaking research\u00a0made headlines around the world, including\u00a0features\u00a0in\u00a0The Atlantic<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0The Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/a>, and\u00a0The New York Times<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"PR_rootstech_2018_Science_family_tree_4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As a collaborative site, sharing Geni pages with others is important.\u00a0This year made some enhancements on how to share content from Geni<\/a>. A new Share icon now appears at the top of every page to let you quickly copy\u00a0a URL or share on social media.<\/p>\n

\"fbsocialsharing<\/a><\/p>\n

Perhaps our\u00a0most exciting\u00a0announcement was the long-awaited improvements to our brand new HTML tree<\/a>. Now all users can easily access and edit their family trees from any tablet or mobile device. Although it does not\u00a0have all the features of the Flash version of the tree yet, the new HTML version offers some new and exciting features for non-Flash users. The new HTML tree introduced a new side panel in the tree, so that you can quickly view information about a profile.<\/p>\n

\"jfk-panel\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Throughout the year, we\u00a0have continued to work on improvements to the HTML version of the tree\u00a0to bring all of the features from the Flash tree to the HTML version. Just a few short months after we first released the new version of the HTML tree, we were happy to announce that two of the Flash tree’s most powerful features were now available – Move This Person and Resolve Duplicates<\/a>. Stay tuned in the coming new year for more exciting updates to the tree!<\/p>\n

\"map-tray\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Security is very important to us. To help our users better secure their Geni accounts, we released two-factor authentication<\/a> for an extra layer of security. When enabled, two-factor authentication helps to ensure that\u00a0only you<\/em>\u00a0are\u00a0able to access your Geni account, even if someone knows your password.<\/p>\n

\"04_qr_code\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We also had a great time throughout the year attending several genealogy conferences. At RootsTech<\/a>, Randy Schoenberg gave an exciting session on “Collaborative Town Projects,” where he shared how genealogists can work collaboratively on the genealogies and community histories related to a specific location. From Utah, we headed over to Grand Rapids, Michigan for the National Genealogical Society 2018 Family History Conference<\/a>\u00a0and then back to\u00a0our own backyard in Burbank, California for SCGS Jamboree<\/a>. Finally, we flew to Fort Wayne, Indiana for FGS<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"curatorsRT2018\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This year we participated in a few international conferences as well with Geni curators representing Geni in Australia and Sweden. We also had the opportunity to head to Oslo, Norway for the first-ever MyHeritage user conference, MyHeritage LIVE<\/a>. Geni’s General Manager Mike Stangel held a Geni workshop and gave a very informative presentation about Geni and the World Family Tree. The conference was a huge success! If you were unable to attend MyHeritage LIVE or missed the live stream, you can watch all 24 lectures for free on Legacy Family Tree Webinars<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"MHLIVE_02\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We also heard fascinating stories from the community throughout the year. Many shared with us their oldest family photographs<\/a>, some dating as far back as 1864! We also gave away a free Geni Pro subscription during Family History Month<\/a>. To enter, you had to answer the question, “What\u2019s the most surprising or interesting discovery you\u2019ve made in your family tree?\u201d The winner, John Stevens, shared\u00a0that he\u00a0discovered his 5th great grandfather was hung for high treason!<\/p>\n

\"FelipeBrignardello<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s been a great year at Geni and we\u00a0look forward to 2019!<\/p>\n

We wish you a very happy new year!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the year comes to close, we’re taking a look back at some of the amazing things that happened at Geni. This year an amazing 50,000 family trees connected to\u00a0Geni’s World Family Tree, helping to bring the total number of profiles in the World Family Tree to nearly 130 million people! From new improvements to our long-awaited HTML version of the tree to the release of two-factor authentication to\u00a0better secure your Geni accounts to the… Read the full story<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":102618,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[171],"tags":[4567,521],"class_list":["post-102601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-company-news","tag-new-year","tag-recap"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102601"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/81"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102601"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102645,"href":"https:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102601\/revisions\/102645"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}