Geni's Quest Toward One World Family Tree

Geni founder David Sacks has said all along that he wants to create a single family tree for the whole world. Based on some usage stats the company will announce on Thursday, they’re moving towards that goal: over a million unique visitors in August (growth has been steady).

And the biggest family tree at Geni now has over 680,000 profiles and 40,000 users (profiles include deceased family members).

A key feature driving big trees is the ability to merge smaller ones, which can create a snowball effect. Prior to the release of the merge feature, Geni’s largest tree was just 35,000 profiles.

Geni now allows users to upload photos and videos, arrange family calendars, etc. As we said over a year ago, the site is clearly aiming to be the family-centered social network:

Geni won’t be successful if all they can do is get people to add themselves and a couple of relatives and then rarely revisit the site. They want viral growth and the kind of big page view numbers that the large social networks see – up to 20 per day per visitor. To get there they’re adding a few proven features to the site. And by adding these features, they are essentially creating a social network with the family, as well as family friends, as the core. There’s a direct analogy to facebook – instead of colleges and universities, Geni is focusing on family units.