Kincafe.com Takes on Geni

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