Family Pursuit Announces the Release of Private Family Trees

The following announcement was written by Family Pursuit:

Provo, Utah, Jan. 14 - Family Pursuit, a leader in online collaborative genealogy research tools, today announced the release of Private Family Trees.  Designed specifically for collaboration regardless of distance or time, this unique wiki-based website is now available for private use for the genealogist who is looking for a better way to work with others. Family Pursuit’s private family trees allow researchers to share not only conclusions, but their ongoing research, sources, extractions and theories with those invited to join the trees.  They are the perfect solution for sharing research with the entire family, interacting with other family genealogists, or working within a family organization or one-name study.

 

Some of the unique collaborative tools available for private family trees include:

• Inviting an unlimited number of family members to join a private tree
• Organizing and sharing ongoing genealogy research
• Creating and assigning tasks
• Sharing research logs and extractions
• Adding living individuals
• Keeping all information about living and deceased individuals private
• Involving and mentoring family members
• Participating in family discussions
• Receiving notifications of changes made by tree users
• Rolling back and forth any change made by any user
•     Advanced merging and unmerging

Along with these new private trees, Family Pursuit continues to offer its free Community Tree which has been created for genealogists to share research with the genealogy community to reduce duplicate efforts, accelerate research, and network and connect with distant relatives.

“We have found that many genealogists feel more comfortable working privately with those they already know.  A Private Family Tree offers this security,” said Mike Martineau, founder of Family Pursuit.  “When genealogists feel confident in their research conclusions, they will be able to easily copy their conclusions to the Community Tree for others to view and add to. A Private Family Tree also allows the inexperienced genealogist to be privately mentored by more knowledgeable relatives.  We are excited to offer a bridge between those who are overwhelmed by the amount of research and those who want to help but don’t know how.  We look forward to continuing our progress in developing these important tools, and being a part of bringing more people into the work.”

About Family Pursuit

Started in 2004, Family Pursuit, a Provo, Utah company, provides web-based applications to accelerate family history work by providing a framework for genealogy researchers to work together in their efforts and to easily share their ideas, theories, research and conclusions. Family Pursuit enables genealogy enthusiasts to involve family members who have never engaged in family history work, bringing families together in sharing the rewarding experience of researching, exploring, and creating a personal understanding of their heritage. Visit www.familypursuit.com for more information.

Comments

[Dave]

I found this interesting right away and headed straight to the Family Pursuit website. Unfortunately, they do not have an album of screenshots, just very small thumbnails. I do not have the time right now to watch the video tutorials - who knows how long they will take to load?
So, dear Family Pursuit, when you come here looking for responses to this article, please immediately fix your website to include some decent sized screenshots. The thumbnails look enticing, but who knows?

[Janice Gower]

Sounds a lot like geni.com to me. How many of these do we need?

[Michael Martineau]

Dave - Thanks for the suggestion. That's something that is easily added. We'll put out some bigger screen shots ASAP.

Janice - Family Pursuit private family trees do have many features that can be found on geni.com and other family social networks. However, Family Pursuit has a different focus. Family Pursuit focuses on allowing family members to organize, record and collaborate on genealogy research. So, not only can you keep in touch with family members using a Family Pursuit private tree, but you can also coordinate genealogical research among family members. For this reason, we offer more advanced options for sourcing information and tracking changes made by others. This sets Family Pursuit apart from the other family social networks.

[Melinda Pitts Pennington]

I like this idea of sharing research and notes but $59 a year is a little too pricey for us. I might subscribe if they take there price down to half that especially in this economy.

[Holly Kilpatrick]

This sounds very interesting, I will look into it. I have been dabbling in genoom.com and geni.com, but the possibility of notification of changes, and the orientation to genealogy research, sounds very hopeful. I will look into it before I get in too deep with the others. The others are pretty touchy-feely, send gifts online, etc., and not really oriented to research. $59 a year is less than $5 a month, I can cut out a few days at Dunkin Donuts...

[Cary W. Tucker]

That does sound interesting. I have looked into Geni.com and briefly at Genoom.com, and they seem to both be cute, friendly places for storing basic family facts (such as when and where my great grandfather died) but without any means of uploading the source to verify the facts (such as an image of my great grandfather's death certificate).

I have actually been looking for some online collaboration interface for working with some of the other genealogy researchers in my surname subgroup (from Family Tree DNA), and Family Pursuit may fit the bill. So, is the free Community Tree offering necessarily open to the public at large? Or if I wanted to create a family tree that was only open to a small group of other Tucker family researchers, would that require paying for a Private Family Tree?

[Michael Martineau]

@Cary W Tucker - The short answer: the community tree is open to the public at large. If you want a small private group of researchers, you need to purchase a Private Family Tree.

Here's the long answer:
The free community tree is open to the public (as long as they register). Everyone who registers on Family Pursuit gets a free "community tree" account. All information in the community tree is viewable and editable by all other users. Because of this, the community tree is an excellent place to find and collaborate with distant relatives who are working on the same family lines as you. In the community tree you can have discussions with other people on specific ancestors as well as research together in shared research projects.

Some people are not comfortable with an online tree that allows anyone to edit their data. Family Pursuit solves this problem in two ways:

1. Family Pursuit uses an advanced wiki-based engine to keep track of all changes made to an ancestor. If someone makes a mistake, it can be easily undone. This includes merging and un-merging. No information is lost on a merge, and if later it is decided that the merge was a mistake, you can undo the merge with no information lost. Also you can see exactly who made the changes to an ancestor and when. If you have questions, you can start a discussion with that person right on the website to find out why they made the change and if they have more information.

Family Pursuit also uses an advanced notification system. If anyone makes a change/addition to an ancestor you are "watching", you will be notified by email. When you log in, the system will show you exactly where and when the changes were made.

2. The second solution we offer is Private Family Trees. If you wish, you can purchase a Private Family Tree. With a private tree only the people that are invited to the tree can view or edit the information. You can also invite unlimited number of family members/researchers to join and participate in the tree at no additional cost.

A private tree is almost identical to the community tree with a few additions:

- Only those invited to the tree can view or edit information
- Living individuals are allowed in the tree
- There are more social networking tools for communicating with the entire family in the tree
- You can upload photos and documents

Because the community tree is almost identical to a private tree, you can get a good idea how it works by signing up for and participating in the community tree.

[Dae Powell]

Isn't the title of this piece a bit oxymoronic? Why would you want to release PRIVATE Family Trees? Perhaps the words, Private Family Trees, belong in quotes? Sounds like an interesting service, nonetheless.

Happy Dae·
http://ShoeStringGenealogy.com