Genealogy Meets Social Networking at Genoom.com

The following announcement was written by Genoom.com:

Social media takes on the family network with family history / genealogy-based social network, www.Genoom.com. Genoom recently added Chinese language support - the network is now fully accessible in 17 different languages, letting users connect with, and stay in touch with, family across the globe.

Barcelona, Spain - November 17, 2008 -- Family networking site, www.Genoom.com, makes social networking a truly global affair with support for 17 languages, including the latest addition of traditional and simplified Chinese. The social network caters to families interested in staying in touch with relatives near and far, sharing family trees and genealogical research, and more in a private and secure online environment.

Genoom.com is a free family networking tool connecting family members from around the world. Members can add family trees, personal information, photos, videos, and related documents about ancestors and living relatives alike, limiting access to uploaded information through invitations and custom group privacy settings. Genoom even offers a Facebook application, allowing users to access their family tree and communicate with family, all while logged into their Facebook account.

"We're excited to be expanding our reach even further into the international market," says Genoom CEO David Diaz Daré. "By adding Chinese language support to the Genoom network, we're able to connect a large population to family members both locally and globally, unlike other family networking sites. Our goal is to make Genoom as internationally accessible as possible, to connect even distant family in ways previously not available due to geography and language barriers."

With many users able to access the social network in their native language, Genoom allows users to stay in touch with family all over the world. It's an ideal medium for families to connect, ask distant relatives about family histories, and more in a fast manner and safe environment. Members have the ability to upload a variety of information to their family tree, including:

Photos - Whether they're interested in sharing photos of a new baby in the family or hard-to-find photos of ancestors, the Genoom social network makes it easy to share memories with relatives without the costs of photo copying and the delay of shipping pictures.

Videos - First steps, graduation ceremonies, and more can easily be shared with family unable to actually be there by uploading videos to a family network on Genoom.

Documents - For those hard core genealogists or simple ancestry buffs, Genoom makes it possible to share documents either needed or discovered during family history research. Users can share census records, vital records, ship manifests, or other documents that allow family members to better understand and track the lives of their ancestors.

Members of the Genoom network control who is able to view their family tree. They can invite family members via email to build their free family network securely. Genoom offers even greater protection for photos, videos, and documents. Users can create "groups," or subsets of their full family network - when creating photo albums or uploading individual documents or videos, users can then choose which groups have access, and which don't (for example, vital records can be shared with a very limited group rather than both full sides of the user's family tree / network).

Basic membership to the Genoom social network is free, with the ability to add a family tree (including importing GEDCOM files), upload photos, videos, and documents, and send messages to members within the user's family network.

About Genoom

Genoom is a social networking platform designed to build private family networks. Launched in July 2007, the site already features support for users in 17 languages and includes a growing collection of over 3.5 million profiles. From centralizing current family connections to discovering and sharing ancestral information, Genoom offers users a secure, private, and interactive family networking environment on the Web.

For more information about the Genoom, please visit www.Genoom.com.

Comments

[Beth]

I was really pleased to have met you in person at Mesa last weekend! What a kick. One of the gurus, in person.

Anyway, my comment is on Web2.0 proliferation. How are we supposed to keep control? One part of the family is in geni.com; the kids are now into We'reRelated on Facebook; I see you are part of the board on WeRelate from the Allen County Library; there's the old traditional myfamily.com... What are your suggestions on how to make communication and sharing of data and research work in a widely scattered, somewhat disfunctional, i.e. normal, family?

[Chuck]

I concur with Beth. Currently I'm on Geni but our tree has run amuck with dozens of photos of vacations, parties, babies. Chatty family gossip with many like "Oh so glad to see your post" and other nonsense.
Family tree creation has slipped to the back burner.

What are some recommendations for a secure, constructive, and dedicated online site for building a real family tree? Fee based or Free, I'd like to hear some opinions.

[Chuck]

I concur with Beth. Currently I'm on Geni but our tree has run amuck with dozens of photos of vacations, parties, babies. Chatty family gossip with many like "Oh so glad to see your post" and other nonsense.
Family tree creation has slipped to the back burner.

What are some recommendations for a secure, constructive, and dedicated online site for building a real family tree? Fee based or Free, I'd like to hear some opinions.

[Babak Samii]

Hi Chuck and Beth. We surely understand that family trees may "run amuck" with activity from members that may not be relevant or interesting to you. For this specific reason, we have created the Groups feature in Genoom.

You can create a "Main Group" to manage and only focus on activity from family members that are most important to you within your tree.

To see a more detailed explanation, please view the following:
http://www.genoom.com/en/help/What+are+Main+groups+used+for+and+how+do+I+choose+them-46-1

[Beth]

After posting this, I googled social networking and genealogy. The closest I came to what I would like to work with is WeRelate from the Allen County Library. It's a wiki and mostly open - you can make private pages. But, it appears there is a rather steep ramp-up on learning from my level to what I would like my output to be. [I laughed - out loud - when the instructions say that anyone that is eligible for AARP should definitely watch the video instructions! That's a great way of cataloging people with little offensive language. In my neighborhood of Snowbirds, we refer to ourselves as ORFs - old retired folks.]
Sorry Babak, I looked at yours and didn't immediately care for it; I might go back later and look again. It was good to have the excellent descriptions in Dick Eastman's column.

[Carl]

Hi everyone. I had the same problems - getting thrown off track with extra bells and whistles I didn't need. I finally started my own family page - a private family website. It's with MyHeritage, and it has enough picture-stuff to keep the younger generations interested too. Might be worth checking it out.
All the best!
http://www.myheritage.com/