Ancestral Space: Social Media for Genealogy
I read recently on Dick Eastman’s blog that social networking (or media) was going to be the next big thing among genealogists who frequent the Internet. Social media sites include My Space, Facebook and a few others that you may have heard your kids or grandkids mention from time to time. Now if your underage kids have mentioned these then I certainly hope you have a good understanding of what they are and how they work. If you heard your grandkids mention them and you don’t know what they are talking about yet - hang on. Social networking or media sites are these huge online communities where people can contact other people through online profile pages. You join the site and tell everyone everything you want them to know about you, post a few photos and then wait for “friends” to link to your profile. Then you can communicate and post messages to each other or the entire community. These sites were first popular with teenagers but I know several over-30 adults who also have profiles and have managed to re-establish relationships from years past. I, however, do not participate. Well, I did have a My Space account that I set up specifically to monitor Sweetpea’s account when she was younger but I vaguely remember the password.
Anyway, Dick Eastman has rekindled my interest in Facebook. After all, he is an authority on these things, right?. So I signed on and established my account and profile. Once in, you are supposed to be able to use applications to “do things”. I was interested in applications called We’re Related and My Family. Between them, they claim to have 5.7 million users. This must be a gold mine. But I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to get to them from my profile page.
The next morning I cornered Sweetpea. I told her that I needed to pick her brain. This always gets her attention. I asked her if she “does Facebook”. I know she does but she’s 17 and you have to approach her just right in order to get cooperation with a smile. (I love you, Baby.) She confirmed that she did. I explained that I was getting back into my genealogical research and I was trying to catch up with all these other researchers online. She let out a huge sigh of relief. She thought she was in trouble for something. I told her she was cool but I found out that blogs were “in” so I started a blog (I got the exaggerated eyeroll with that one) but now Facebook was supposed to be “hot” any day now and I needed help with applications but I was NOT interested in hooking up with anyone from high school. That totally baffled her.
She explained some things about Facebook (which she prefers now over My Space) and I was able to get into My Family with the search mechanism. Okay, stick figures for your profile. No genealogy or at least not that I can tell. Scratch that.
Next I tried We’re Related. Now this is genealogy related but I see a lot of complaints about gedcoms not loading and mySQL errors. I also hesitate about actually displaying my family tree. I just want to make contact with other researchers working on the same families I am so we can compare notes. With 95,000 daily users you would think I could accomplish that but I wonder how many of those 95,000 daily users can really trace their families back to 1800 or earlier. I think I’ll keep looking.
Next I tried Family Tree. Again I am seeing complaints about gedcoms not loading. But with 30,000 daily users I still wonder how many are serious genealogists. I suspect not many.
I really think that a social networking site is a great idea but I want something that genealogists can use without 50,000 visitors clogging things up with minimal information. I know everyone has to start somewhere but I hesitate to participate. I think it will work best for people just getting started. I mean if they are really interested in family history, is Facebook the place to find out about it?
Then tonight, low and behold, I got wind of Ancestral Space, a social networking site for genealogists. They just started up about 3 weeks ago and have about 400 users so far. I signed up and although I will have to get used to this new idea of having a profile page and all, I think I will enjoy it. But with only 400 users, my chance of connecting with someone is scarce. We need to get the word out. The success of this site depends almost totally on massive participation. Surely we can pull it off.
But speaking of Sweetpea, she’s not home yet. Gotta go.
I’ve experimented a bit with Facebook/We’re Related. Very disappointed at how buggt We’re Related is, along with the complete lack of support and appaent lack of concern by the developers.
Seems to me that the potential advantage of Facebook over sites like Ancestral Space is for the future, not necessarily the present. People you meet at Ancestral Space are most likely a small group of people who are “into” genealogy in a big way and know what they are doing.
With Facebook, you have a much wider potential audience of
(1) People who are on the fringe of being interested and don’t know much of anything, or anybody, or where to start, or how to contribute what they might know but you don’t.
(2) Young people who are distantly related but not really interested, but may become interested in the future. (Sort of like I was 45 years ago, in the years before my grandfather and aunt asked me to start helping with their research.)
In both cases, the contacts made through Facebook can help you identify your extended family, possibly bring you tidbits of information you might never otherwise find, and help new researchers along, whether they start now or wait and remember you five or ten years from now.
My intent with We’re Related, if it ever works reliably, is to enter enough limited family tree data to show the young people I meet there how they are related, both to me and to the other relatives they meet on Facebook.
And those are contacts and relationships that are much more likely to be found on a large, general social site like Facebook than on more limited specialized sites like Ancestral Search, or ancestry, or OneGreatFamily
John - Thanks for the comment. I’m kind of beginning to see it your way. I think my main obstacle at this point is the reputation of social media sites as being a place where young people hang out, post pics of themselves holding a beer and talking about their recent bad behavior. That’s all I have seen to this point. I tried it again last night and I will work on it some more. But I will also give Ancestral Space a chance as well.
Great article and it gives an accurate depiction of the state of social networking and genealogists.
Just an FYI that many of the genea-bloggers have signed up on Facebook as of July 1st and there are about 40 or so members of the Genea-Bloggers group.
While we don’t seem to post many family trees and try to connect along family lines as in WeRelate, Facebook is good to see what your peers are up to in terms of blogging, what carnivals are available (I found your great blog via the 52nd edition of the Carnival of Genealogy), etc.
Take a look on Facebook if you get a chance!
Cheers!
Thomas MacEntee
http:/destinationaustinfamily.blogspot.com
http://andihelped.blogspot.com
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