Kincafe.com Takes on Geni
by
on March 18, 2007,
Newcomer Kincafe.comis a new social network for families, allowing relatives to share pictures, genealogy, scrapbooks, photos, and blogs. Using a family tree structure, Kincafe.com allows users to change settings for privacy on each of the content features.
Kincafe.com is more than a genealogy site; it lets you track contact information, birthdays and anniversaries, share stories, and functions almost like a small networking site for your family within a larger one. The site is currently in beta release, with plans for increased functionality in future releases (for instance, at the moment, you can only zoom in on a view in Internet Explorer).
While Kincafe.com is based on a great concept, it's execution is a bit lacking. I'm already a self-confessed Geni addict, and comparing the two is inevitable. Where Geni succeeds is in the user interface; it's fast and easy to add lots of family tree members in a short amount of time. Maybe it's that I'm easily impressed, but it's much more appealing to get off of a fast start with a few clicks in a Flash app than to go through the multiple drop-down boxes and pop-ups in Kincafe.com that make the site feel like it's 2001 all over again. I was able to add about 1/3 of my extended family to Geni in the same amount of time that it took me to get my information into Kincafe.com along with my parents. And I still can't figure out how to display my antecedents on Kincafe.com.
Ideally, someone other then me will come up with the idea to merge the two companies and add Geni's great UI to Kincafe.com 's additional features.
Sources: eHub, TechCrunch forums
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to profy RSS feed!
kalipso
Mav
Orient expresS
Opensource 
Michael Fidler 
Neither of these sites will be able to be successful. Geni was way over valued and completely lacks the functionality to bring users back, and kincafe is just a clone of hundreds of other family oriented social networks.
I use http://www.thefamilyforest.com and find it to be much more useful and intuitive than other sites. It’s a family social networking site that doesn’t try to hard, but is much more simple and intuitive.
In the interest of full disclosure, you wouldn’t happen to be the same Brian OF The Family Forest, would you? http://www.thefamilyforest.com/blog/
I disagree about your comments about Geni. It’s ease of use has lured in family members who are neither Web-savvy nor very computer-literate, and I’m speaking solely from personal witnessing of it.
I’d recommend marketing your app in a more positive manner, rather than as an imaginary user and by degrading existing sites that have already proven popular.
Brian’s a pretty common name, I’d say.
In regards to geni, don’t you think it’s interesting that after an explosion of growth and funding in early 2007, the failed to grow at all? They have 3 million profiles and yet only about 100,000 active users. The functionality is just limited.
Is Brian a common name? Yes. Is commenting on a year-old review common? Not so much, unless you have a particular axe to grind.
I also think that comparing active users to profiles in the case of an app like Geni is misleading. Of COURSE you are going to have an exponentially higher number of profiles than users in that sort of situation, unless you have a way for my great-great-grandmother to come back to life and join the site. (Also, the latest figure is 10 million, not 3 million based on their splash page.)
Again, you haven’t given a single reason for anyone to switch to your app from one they are already established members of, other than to claim Geni has “limited functionality.” Obviously, Geni users would disagree that it’s limited for their needs.
I’m not going to post a sales pitch about why I think thefamilyforest.com is better. I simply stumbled upon this post while trying to read up on news surrounding social networking, didn’t notice the date attached, and briefly wanted to weigh in with my thoughts.
I’m not hellbent on degrading sites like geni, I just find it interesting that a site with so much media exposure and funding can have a growth chart like this: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/geni.com?site0=geni.com&y=r&z=3&h=300&w=610&range=1y&size=Medium on alexa.