nobody can say if geni will succeed, but they are doing three things i’ll applaud: (1) targeting a definable audience with demonstrated market power; (2) using new technologies to improve on an existing model and challenge a dominant competitor; and (3) embracing user experience and design (what consumers want) over engineering hype/dogma (what the valley wants).

i’ll stand behind you when you criticize facebook because it doesn’t do #1 at all, #3 poorly, and it remains to be seen if it does #2 nearly as well as the hype suggests. but when you dismiss other ventures as “lame”, you risk being just as inarticulate and easy to write off as your friend Duncan Riley.

imho, geni is doing a lot right, and certainly nothing wrong. pick on something work picking on.

You guys are so wrong! My senile aunt just loves these sites and she checks everyday to see who has updated. She is just too paranoid to click ads or buy anything online. But, it is a really great branding opportunity!!! Too bad she will be dead in ten years or less and already realized clothes (or any other items) don’t make the person. What else could geni et al. sell but adverts? Please let me know. Thnx.

Jay, you’re delusional.

Geni is PURELY viral. Geni smartly adds a field for each family member’s email address. this is huge for those interested in geneology, since (a) everyone works on a collaborative tree, so there doesn’t have to be a “manager” doing all the work and (b) this makes it easy to get that odd second-cousin who is also working on your tree to share their info.

i’d also say it’s novel and addresses a distinct audience from other social networks, and one that is more profitable. my 60-yo mother is a genophile and has struggled with the familysearch software for years. Geni is the first website i’ve ever shown her that she said “wow! this is easy!”

she’s a great example of a desirable persona, that unsophisticated user that every start-up leaves behind because they’re just too difficult. but they are not the long tail, they’re the short one.