Genoom Blog

We wanted to write a post about our Family Statistics feature because we think it’s a great way to learn some interesting facts about your family and we’ve been receiving a lot of positive feedback from Genoom users.

The aim of Family Statistics is to provide a visual representation of demographic data about your family. This means you can view graphical charts and graphs that show you data about four distinct demographic categories: gender distribution, geographic distribution, births and names.

More specifically, the statistics include:

- Proportion of males and females

- Longevity by gender

- Location of birth

- Location of current residency

- Groups of actual pages

- Birthdays per month

You can even filter this data for specific groups within your family network. In other words, you can select to view statistics for your entire family network, just your family tree, your direct family or any custom group you have created.

Below is a screen shot of the statistics landing page (click on the image to see full size). Remember, this is a Pro feature and you can only  access your family statistics if you are a Pro member.

As always, we love to hear feedback and welcome you to suggest any ideas you think could improve this feature.

You asked and we listened! We are happy to add yet another great feature to the Genoom Pro account: backup your family tree information. With this new feature you can now save your family tree data as a standard GEDCOM file with a simple click of your mouse button.

We have also included the option to save your photo albums and documents. Simply go to the backup page and select the photo albums and documents you want to download and the files will be saved on your computer.

To access this feature, you need to be a Pro member.

Today we are very pleased to announce the Quick Edit feature that will make updating profiles a lot easier and faster. With Quick Edit you can view a list of your members in your family network, find out their missing data and make changes to the profiles in real time. This includes:

• User First name
• User Last name
• Date of birth, city and country
• Date of death, city and country

The Quick Edit is a Pro Member feature and can be accessed by going to the List View and clicking on the “quick edit” link at the top of the page.

Introducing the Genoom Toolbar! The toolbar is a free add-on to your web browser that lets you stay connected to Genoom and find out what’s happenening in your family network. It’s easy to install and works with Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.

Here are some of the features:

Google powered search - search the web with a simple click of the mouse

Quick links - access your home page, family tree, list and other pages

Add photos - start your photo uploads

New messages - receive a notification as soon as you have a new message

Events - reminders of important events in your family calendar

People counter - the number of people in your family network

Users online - find out if someone in your family is online

Status updates - read the latest activity in your family

Look for the toolbar graphic in the right-side column of your home page to get started. Or you may click the following links:

Go to English toolbar »

Go to Spanish toolbar »

Go to French toolbar »

Go to Portuguese toolbar »

This week we are excited to release the new Status Bar feature in Genoom. The Status Bar is a fun way to share information and tell your family what you´re up to.

Your Status updates will be displayed in the top area of your profile and show up on the activity feed of your family members. You can also choose who views your Status updates by clicking on “edit” once you begin typing in the box.

So, what are you up to?

This week we´re launching a new improvement and taking hiding branches once step further to avoid your family network from being too extensive with branches that you don´t have any relationship with (or little interest).

Therefore, from now on, all the branches of your non-blood relatives will be closed by default except for your current partner.

However, you can configure your family network and specify the branches of your non-blood relatives you would like to open or close. In other words, you have control of which non-blood relatives you would like visible in your network.

If your family tree has extended branches of your non-bloodrelated family with whom you don´t have any relation (or little interest), you can now configure your family tree to hide branches. Simply click on “close branch” on a non-bloodrelated member´s profile and that section of the tree will be hidden. You can just as easily “open branch” as well.

Closing a branch also means that you will no longer see the activity of the members of that branch in the activity feed of your network.

This week we´re happy to release a big improvement to the message center in Genoom to make communication with your family a whole lot better. Most notably, this includes:

• Organized message threads: Follow the sequence of conversations you´ve had with another person (or multiple people) in a single, coherent message thread
• Bulk action feature: This allows you to make bulk actions (delete, mark as read, mark as unread) to your messages ever so much easier
• New layout: The display format of your Inbox and Sent items has been modified for better usability and readability so you can quickly scan through your messages

We hope you find these improvements as useful as we do!

Now you can have and ongoing conversation with family members with the new Forum feature.  Using the Forum is a great way to discuss specific topics, share information and ask specific questions from your relatives.

To participate in a Forum is very easy.

1) Simply click on the Forum link in the navigation menu and you will see a list of all Topics that have been created by your family members.

2) Click on the Topic that interests you and you can add your message and join the conversation.

If no Topics exist, then you can start a new one by clickng the “New Topic” button in the top-right corner of the page.

christmas photo genoom

With Christmas right around the corner, now you can use any of the photos in your Genoom albums to create a personalized Christmas Postcard to send to your family and friends.  It´s fun, it´s easy, and best of all it´s free!

To get started, simply go to one of your photos:

1) Click on the “Send this photo as Christmas Postcard” button below the photo.

2) Customize your postcard

3) Select who you want to send it to (you can even import your contact lists from other email accounts!)

4) Hit send!