How Genealogists use Social Networking

Gena Philibert Ortega has written an interesting article about social networking for genealogists. She, and three guest authors, describe their successes with this new generation of web development that is all about collaboration and communication.

You can read the article in the WorldVitalRecords.com newsletter at http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/news/Volume3Issue41/?page=feature.

Comments

[Michael Melendez]

I am surprised how quickly genealogy has spread into the social networking world. Other than blogging, there was not much out there. Over a year ago the youth genealogists created a Facebook fan page and a few months later all the national and other organizations started to add pages as well, not to mention all the new profiles created by the genealogists. Now the fever as spread to Twitter and others, including the new genealogywise.com

More collaboration and internet communication is all the more better for young genealogists without expendable incomes. Now the genealogy world and network is becoming totally open to them on-line. I think its great.

By the way, Dick, do you still want that article? I have already sent it to you.

[M. Diane Rogers]

Might be instructive for us all to research/document 'our' history on-line. I thought it was at least partly the Genea-Bloggers Group convincing many genealogists (even non-bloggers) to join Facebook and later Twitter too (and now GenealogyWise).

[Thomas MacEntee]

Good idea Diane - I probably will post a more extensive timeline but here is what I know personally from my experience with genealogy blogs:

- The term "geneabloggers" had been used informally at least before I began blogging about my family history in December, 2006.

- Jasia of Creative Gene organized the Carnival of Genealogy in June 2006 and this served to solidify the genealogy blogging community around a regularly scheduled participatory event.

- Another blog event which seemed to bond a core group of these bloggers together was the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories in December 2007.

- In mid-2008, many of the genealogy bloggers became involved with Facebook at the urging of Megan Smolenyak of RootsTelevision and Megan's Roots. I believe that is how the invites started.

- In June 2008, the GeneaBloggers Group on Facebook was created so that there would be a convenient place to lists events like blog carnivals, memes, contests, etc. This group now has well over 600 members.

- In January 2009, the domain name "geneabloggers" was used to host a website as an alternative to the Facebook site for those who did not want to join Facebook. Events and items are posted in parallel.

- In early 2009, Geneabloggers began using Twitter to promote events and member blogs and blog posts.

- In June 2009, the genealogy bloggers made a splash at SCGS Jamboree 2009 in Burbank, CA and began using the Twitter hashtag #scgs09.

- And now in July 2009, there is a GeneaBloggers group on GenealogyWise.com which also lists events and items in parallel.