Yawn. TechCrunch reports that MyHeritage and Geni are really duking it out. MyHeritage has raised $9 MM over three rounds. Geni has raised $11.5 MM at stupid valuations if TechCrunch is to be believed. It’s also interesting that the investors aren’t particularly known for foolishness either - Accel, The Founder’s Fund, and CRV. Then again, big firms make some of the stupidest move. My money is on both of these companies generating negative return for Accel and CRV.
In the case that our friendly fools in Silicon Valley forgot that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (a.k.a. Mormons) dominate this business, I thought I’d refer them to FamilySearch.org which provides an incredible library of resources on ancestors. Now I know that Geni and MyHeritage are focused more on living relatives as opposed to FamilySearch which focuses on deceased relatives, but the point is that researching and cataloguing living relatives is boring and is not compelling. Why will Geni and MyHeritage fail?
1. These sites are not viral. There is little reason for them to grow. Let’s take a look at their traffic. Geni isn’t even as popular as the overhyped failure known as Justin.tv. Sure, Alexa isn’t perfect but given that these are major social networking sites, you’d think they have a bit more momentum. Clearly, they don’t.
2. If your family members are into social networking, they are already on Myspace, Facebook, Orkut, Hi5, Tagged, etc. and don’t care about Geni and MyHeritage. Yes, I know there is always room for niche social networks and in 20 years, Myspace and Facebook will be just a pleasant memory in our past - kind of like LA Lights. Older family members are unlikely to join and if they are, they are probably the kind of person who already has an account and will use another social network.
3. Current social networks already allow you to be “friends” with your family. This sounds silly, but you can tag people as relatives on Facebook. Why on earth would I want to join a social network just to “network” with my family. Unless I’m organizing the Smith Family Reunion, I think I can manage my family contacts fairly well with the pre-existing resources. If I was to be organizing the Smith Family Reunion, I’d just create a group on Google, Facebook, or elsewhere.
4. Being featured on TechCrunch is a proxy for being a dumb start-up. No further comment is required.
Bye bye Geni and MyHeritage.
