27 August 2011

Facebook Relative Finder Review

Relative Finder is a Facebook app that can be used by those with a new.FamilySearch.org account to find relationships to Facebook friends and famous people.

At first I was skeptical, but soon I found several Facebook friends who were generally 10th-13th cousins. It was fun to see my relationship to several friends. I never expected I was that closely related to them. I was thinking our common ancestor was closer to the time of Adam and Eve. It was similarly exciting to see relationships to Presidents and other famous people. Most of my cousins came from the same several common ancestors from one of my New England to England lines. Most of my mothers lines are German and we had no success there. That just means I need to do more research, or I need to find more friends with German lines from my ancestral towns.

My favorite part of Relative Finder is the ability to share your new-found family instantly over Facebook. As one developer noted, people prefer to interact on Facebook in this generation. Many people feel too busy to view a collaborative tree website, but will check Facebook regularly. I have already had several friends add this app since I started using it a couple days ago. While new.FamilySearch.org is in beta only members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints which is FamilySearch's sponsor, and others who have been directly invited will have access to Relative Finder. Once the service opens to the general public, the most difficult thing will be to convince people who are not already interested to link their genealogy to a FamilySearch Account. As people see their friends post cool relationships, it will motivate them to do the same. I foresee this app contributing to thousands of new genealogy enthusiasts entering our community.

1 comment:

  1. Relative Finder? Oh, Michael I feel like I was living under a rock! I hadn't used it before. How did I miss it. I know what I'll be checking in when I get home later! Thanks for posting. Just getting caught up in all my reading now! :)

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for your kind and thoughtful comments.