January 18, 2007Geni Launch CrashesYesterday a TechCrunch post pointed me towards a Flash-based family tree creator called Geni. I'm into this kind of thing so I went off to take the new product for a spin. Unfortunately, Geni wasn't prepared for the traffic that came their way when they were picked up by TechCrunch, Lifehacker, and other sites. Yesterday, I was willing to cut them some slack but they're still having problems today and I'm loosing patience as I imagine others are. Geni would have been much better off with a limited and more controlled release. This isn't the right way to do it - you only get so many chances to impress the early adopters and opinion leaders. A release like this leaves people wondering if they should trust you with their data and it will be hard for them to get past the initial bad impression. A lot of web X.0 startups are just a flash in the pan - Geni's flash is underexposing the picture. Updated 01/19/07 - still having technical difficulties
Updated 01/21/07: Arrington agrees with my early assessment - TechCrunch Geni Overwhelmed with Early Popularity - notice the last part of the permalink address "/geni-blew-it/." I finally managed to start building my family tree last night using Geni and there's a lot I like about the service. If they can get past the technical hurdles Geni is sure to be very popular. Updated 01/22/07: mike@geni.com keeps sending me this very generic, not all that informative, automated message. I've received 3 exact copies of this message. Suggestion: make it more friendly, informative, and a bit more sincere.
Posted by Cale on Jan 18, 2007  Categories: Favorites, tech.commentary, tech.commentary.web Technorati Tags: geni familytree TrackBackTrackBack URL for this entry: |
