Business - Written by Mike Dover on Thursday, February 15, 2007 16:04 - 4 Comments
World Wide Family Tree
There was a great article in Scienitific American a few years ago about how mitochondrial DNA analysis suggests that everyone on Earth is descended from one woman (dubbed “Eve“) that lived in Africa 140,000 years ago.
The math behind family trees is interesting. Among the many criticisms of the Da Vinci Code (check out the Wikipedia site) is the existence of a Last Scion (the last remaining living descendent of Jesus). Religious questions, aside, the odds of any specific bloodline that was intact 2000 years ago had a single descendent alive today is extraordinarily remote — bloodlines would either have millions of members or would have died out.
A new project, started by a former PayPal executive, described in today’s Wall St. Journal, will build family trees through Wiki technology, with the hopes that one day the full diagram of the world’s population will be completed.
From the article:
Now, sites are aiming to eliminate some of those drawbacks. One new entrant, Geni.com, which was launched last month by a former PayPal executive, offers a new model, based on connecting living relatives free of charge. The site is part genealogy, part six degrees of separation: Instead of paying a fee to research family records buried in archives, it asks users to build their own family trees — using the knowledge of living relatives — that eventually will merge into one giant family tree for the world. That is the hope anyway.
Geni.com is taking some of the elements of popular so-called social-networking and user-generated content sites such as Wikipedia and MySpace. It went live in mid-January and has registered more than 100,000 users since then. It has done no traditional marketing yet, but blogs such as Digg (where users submit news stories) and Tech Crunch (which focuses on technology) passed the word. The site is free. Rather than charging fees, Geni plans on selling advertising and also plans to generate revenue by creating “premium” accounts and selling products, such as posters or coffee-table books of the family trees.
4 Comments
Alan
Alan
For any specific individual bloodline, the chances are quite small that only one member will exist from a given descendant. But given lots of family trees branching from any given point in history I suppose there are a good number of 1-person family trees in total today.
The Geni.com is an interesting way to pool different family trees. Reminds me of some commercial service that have sprung up that use DNA samples to trace heritage (although they keep the database, not public for obvious reasons). I think oxfordancestors.com is doing something of the kind.
JayPel
Interesting tact to use methodology developed to revover the Human Genome and Mitochondrial DNA analysis and apply it to family tree research. Similar concept used in in applying web collaboration such as Roots Web ( http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com ) and “World Family Tree” ( http://www.genealogy.com ) among others.
Difference here would seem application of automated analytics as opposed to human cognition to establish linking. Linking in family trees has always been a matter of probabilities — a difficult enough task of weighing them within the limits of the human mind. Using automated analytics could help improve statistical probability to points much nearer virtual certainty.
JayPel
Interesting tact to use methodology developed to revover the Human Genome and Mitochondrial DNA analysis and apply it to family tree research. Similar concept used in in applying web collaboration such as Roots Web ( http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com ) and “World Family Tree” ( http://www.genealogy.com ) among others.
Difference here would seem application of automated analytics as opposed to human cognition to establish linking. Linking in family trees has always been a matter of probabilities — a difficult enough task of weighing them within the limits of the human mind. Using automated analytics could help improve statistical probability to points much nearer virtual certainty.
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For any specific individual bloodline, the chances are quite small that only one member will exist from a given descendant. But given lots of family trees branching from any given point in history I suppose there are a good number of 1-person family trees in total today.
The Geni.com is an interesting way to pool different family trees. Reminds me of some commercial service that have sprung up that use DNA samples to trace heritage (although they keep the database, not public for obvious reasons). I think oxfordancestors.com is doing something of the kind.