Here is another statistics snapshot of GenealogyWise just 25.5 hours from the last one.  It is amazing how fast it is growing.

July 9, 2009, 8:00 PM MST

Members: 1157 (+685)
Forums: 26 (+16)
Groups: 361 (+162)
Blog Posts: 50 (+26)
Videos: 150 (+33)

Not bad for a single day.

If you haven’t already heard, FamilyLink has created a Facebook clone specifically for genealogists. It is called GenealogyWise.  When I found out about it yesterday, there were already 130+ people registered ahead of me.

I thought it would be interesting to capture some of the site’s statistics so that we have something to compare it against later.

July 8, 2009, 6:30 PM MST

Members: 472
Forums: 10
Groups: 199
Blog Posts: 24
Videos: 117

Not bad for a site that won’t officially release until Friday, July 17.

Today company CEO, Paul Allen, tweeted (posted on Twitter) that he is beginning the definition phase of a new Chief Genealogy Officer (CGO) position.  One of the main responsibilities of this new position will be to “help manage GenSeek–[a] directory of all the world’s genealogy sources.” 

Yesterday Mr. Allen confirmed the speculation that GenSeek is the realization of the partnership between FamilyLink.com and FamilySearch to update the Family History Library catalog with Web 2.0 features.  These features include community contributed catalog entries and digitized sources. The release is planned for the next 2 months or so and I would expect to see a job posting before then.

The fact that FamilyLink.com is creating this position must mean that it expects GenSeek to be a big part of its service offering and  a key element to the company’s success. 

Only one company that I know has a similar C-level genealogy position.  It is Ancestry.com which in January 2007 appointed Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak as its Chief Family Historian.

Predictions anyone? 

• Elizabeth Shown Mills?
• Loretto Dennis Szucs?
• Kory Meyerink?
• Geoff Rasmussen?

What do you mean you have never heard of it before?  You must not be on Twitter. 

What is Twitter you ask?

The quick explanation of Twitter is that it is like blogging, but you only have 140 characters to get your message across.  Some call it micro blogging.  What do you twitter about?  You answer the question: “What are you doing?”  Some take it literally and some just share what they are thinking about at the time.  It is a great way to connect with others you may never meet in person.  It is also a great way to get the inside scoop on things that are happening in the genealogy world.

Twitter Detective

When I joined twitter on 19 December 2008, one of the first people that I “followed” was Paul Allen, the CEO of FamilyLink.com.  What that means is that any “tweet” that Paul posts, I would see as well.  I was able to follow Paul on his recent trip to Auckland, New Zealand.  And that is where I first heard about GenSeek.

There are only a few tweets that mention GenSeek, so all we have right now is a name and its goal to be the “world’s gateway to family history content.”

Here is a snapshot of my TweetDeck pane that shows a Twitter search for “genseek” with the most recent tweets on top:

Transcript of Twitter search for “genseek”:

 Dave_Whittle: @paulballen Hi, Paul. So what will set GenSeek apart from the crowd?
Mon 19 Jan 15:34

 paulballen: @marktucker GenSeek.com will be coming out in the next 2 months or so. Until then, we could email you a powerpoint, but that’s about it.
Mon 19 Jan 15:31

 TamuraJones: @paulballen FamilyLink has the genseek.com domain. Australians probably think of Jenny’s genseek.net first. Will that return on genseek.com?
Mon 19 Jan 02:49

 marktucker: @paulballen – Where can I find out more information about GenSeek?
Sun 18 Jan 19:53

 paulballen: Nearly all the genealogists we meet are enthusiastic about GenSeek and want to help us make it the world’s gateway to family history content
Sun 18 Jan 18:51

 paulballen: 7:30 am in Auckland. Getting ready for day 4 of genealogy conference. Will show GenSeek, WorldHistory.com and WorldVitalRecords.com today.
Sun 18 Jan 11:29

GenSeek Speculation

I wonder if this has anything to do with an announcement that was made in May 2008 about a partnership between FamilySearch and FamilyLink.com to produce what Paul called, the Family History Library Catalog 2.0.   What could be a better “gateway” than a library catalog?  Here is a quote from the May 2008 post:

“The new catalog …may become the single best starting point for family history searches”

This blog post and the corresponding FamilySearch announcement promise big things for FHLC 2.0 and I haven’t heard much about it since then.  So maybe this is it.

Even if GenSeek doesn’t turn out to be FHLC 2.0, something exciting is happening at FamilyLink.com and within weeks we should know what it is.

And about that Twitter thing?  If you do decide to join the Twittering masses, you are welcome to follow me if you like.

The Genealogy Software Community is in great need of innovation and it is great to see an innovative company like FamilyLink.com spend some time “in the trenches” doing family history.  Maybe they will come to understand and embrace the Genealogical Proof Standard and Source Citations and find ways to implement them in software in ways that won’t scare those who are starting out in family history.

Paul references a talk given by Marissa Mayer at Stanford a few years ago on the topic of Google’s culture of innovation.
She included the following 9 points:

1. Ideas come from everywhere
2. Share everything you can.
3. You’re brilliant. We’re hiring.
4. A license to pursue dreams.
5. Innovation not instant perfection.
6. Data is a-political.
7. Creativity loves constraint.
8. Users not money.
9. Don’t kill projects.  Morph them.

I met Paul last week during the BYU Computerized Genealogy and Family History Conference and was impressed by his sincerity and desire to grow the family history economy.  This latest announcement is continued proof that he is out to make a positive change in the world of genealogy and family history.

Web 2.0

The term Web 2.0 has been around since 2004 and is defined by wikipedia as the:

“perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services — such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies — which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users”

There is much debate over the definition of Web 2.0 and what makes a website “Web 2.0″.  According to SEOmoz.org, some of the defining characteristics of Web 2.0 are:

• User generated and/or user influenced content
• Applications that use the Web (versus the desktop) as a platform, in innovative ways
• Similar visual design and shared functional languages
• Leveraging of popular trends, including blogging, social tagging, wikis, and peer-to-peer sharing
• Inclusion of emerging web technologies like RSS, AJAX, APIs (and accompanying mashups), Ruby on Rails and others
• Open source or sharable/editable frameworks in the form of user-oriented “create your own” APIs

Web 2.0 links:

• O’Reilly Radar - Web 2.0 Compact Definition: Trying Again
• SEOmoz’s Web 2.0 Awards
• WebTrends 2.0 - Web 2.0 Directory
• Pixel Acres - The Visual Design of Web 2.0
• Web Design from Scratch - Current Style in Web Design

Sample Sites:

• Flickr
• del.icio.us
• LinkedIn
• Wikipedia

Genealogy 2.0

When I search the internet for “genealogy 2.0″, I get a number of sites that talk about the application of Web 2.0 to genealogy.  These sites mention social networking and collaboration as key components of Genealogy 2.0.  One blog, The Plog: Pytlewski Log, states:

“traditionally genealogy 2.0 has only referred to the new internet based applications that are changing the way we collaborate as a genealogical community”

My view of Genealogy 2.0 is broader than Web 2.0 genealogy application or what I term, Web 2.0+Gen.  Maybe it is because I have developed both web applications and Windows client applications.  Maybe it is because I see so many areas for improvement and innovation in genealogy software and I don’t want to wait around for Genealogy 2.5 or 3.0.  Or maybe it is just the developer in me that wants to avoid tight coupling. But pairing Genealogy 2.0 with Web 2.0 excludes genealogy software that is not web-based.  It also seems to focus too much on what Web 2.0 is and not what Genealogy 2.0 could be.

Genealogy 2.0 links:

• Genealogy 2.0
• Family Matters

Sample Sites:

• FamilyLink
• Geni
• FamilyPursuit

Expanded View of Genealogy 2.0

Many of these ideas are not new, but have been in the genealogy community for years.  The time is ripe for them to materialize as software that will aid genealogists and family historians to do things that they have never been able to easily do before. 

An expanded view of Genealogy 2.0 includes the following characteristics:

• Social networking 
• Collaboration during research, analysis, and conclusions
• More than just sharing data and results
• Supports sources, information, evidence, and conclusions
• Document-centered data collection
• Standardized source citation (see Evidence Explained)
• Source citation as data not text
• Source provenance
• Information extraction
• Evidence evaluation and weight
• Conclusion recording
• Online data backup
• Community of researchers
• Online data storage or peer-to-peer offline storage
• Data linking and layering, not merging
• Expanded to include not only web-based applications but also desktop and mobile
• Modernizing of GEDCOM or replacement with XML-based format
• The ability to not do anything with genealogy for a year and then start right where I left off without any loss of information or momentum

Now the last point may just be my own personal wish list item, but if  a Genealogy 2.0 application included a place to put everthing and kept track of what I have done and what else needs to be done then it would be much easier to continue where I left off.

Genealogy 2.0 Expanded links:

• Source-Centricity
• Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace by Elizabeth Shown Mills
• The BCG Genealogical Standards Manual

I look forward to your comments and ideas about Genealogy 2.0.