Family.ME Private Social Network Helps (Re)Connect With Your Loved Ones

A recent partnership between the travel search engine Momondo and AncestryDNA gave birth to a viral video which features 67 people who had their DNA tested. Needless to say, the majority of the participants were surprised by their results.

The video got the entire world thinking – how much do I really know about myself?

The fact is – so much about our family exist in flux. Aside from those closest to us who we talk to on a regular basis – we cannot really say that we know our ancestors.

Just ask yourself – how far back can you name them?

The importance of genealogy

By familiarizing with your ancestors, you develop a healthy and accurate form of self-knowledge. Understanding blood relatives’ temperaments and styles of thinking helps you better understand yourself and develop a coherent sense of identity.

Namely, quite often people rely upon their dominant cultural schemas, and without a complete picture, they might find themselves confused with certain character traits when, in fact, they are rooted in a distant relative.

The benefits of genealogy were recognised by a team behind Family.me. They decided to build a private social network where people will be able to build their family trees, connect with other family members, share memories, and keep the record of the most important family events. The platform is intended to strengthen the existing relationships, help build new ones, and aid in discovering details of your family history.

Have we managed to spark your interest in the topic so far? Wondering if there are any branches of your family tree you haven’t had the chance to get to know?

Here’s how this attractive and unique social network can help.

Family.me: A social network for families

Family.me was launched in February in 2015 with the idea to unite families and enable them to discover, share, and preserve important memories. It is a private social network that serves as a real-time, collaborative platform for documenting family legacies by building a family tree. You can invite your loved ones to join via email and ask them to contribute with, not just their knowledge, but also photographs that can be easily uploaded to the platform.

Family.me simplified the search for family history by partnering with FamilySearch, a non-profit family history organization that keeps more than one billion historical records. Owing to this collaboration, you can have millions of ancestry records at the palm of your hand, completely for free.

Intuitive and game-like experience

What makes this platform so attractive is its simplicity of use, praised by both young, digital generation, and those less tech-savvy ones. Available both as a desktop and mobile version, it enables multiple members to build one tree, rather than leaving it all to one person. Everybody has the chance to contribute with their knowledge and participate in a further search for more distant relatives.

Furthermore, in an effort to engage the young ones and get them interested in genealogy, Family.me team gamified the process of tree creation. Here’s the thing: usually, it is the ‘more mature’ family members who insist on reconnecting and maintaining family relationships. How come? Because it takes life experience to understand the importance of keeping your loved ones close.

Adding game-like elements and displaying properties of other social media platforms, younger generations that grew up in these online environments easily connect with Family.me’s interface and practices. You can add photos, tag them with labels for different events and leave comments. It is a familiar social media experience but in this unique case, it easily interests an entire family, regardless of their age.

And don’t worry about the privacy of the data you upload – whatever you choose to include in your family tree will be available only to your family members.

It’s also interesting to note that you are able to tag other families through tags in a memory or a description. For instance, you can mention someone who’s been on a wedding, or has celebrated the birth of a new family member. This way you get a chance to strengthen the bonds beyond the blood ones and stay close to the most important people in your life.

Events worth documenting

On their blog, they emphasise the fact that family is so much more than the list of people you are related to; it’s the people who share your holiday table, who are there for you in both your best and toughest times. They are by your side, even if miles away, for “the big events”.

Family is so much more than the people you’re related to. It’s the people who share your holiday table, who you turn to when times are tough, and those you celebrate life’s big milestones with.

With that in mind, Family.me allows you to document all memories that affect the formation of the family tree, like weddings, graduation, the birth of a new family member, one’s passing, military service, and moving.

A sneak peek into the public trees

The platform also allows you to check out a few publicly available family trees, including the Trumps, the Obamas, the Clintons, the Kennedys, the Kardashians and British Royal Family, as well as Game of Thrones families, thus helping you enter their world of epic drama and intrigue.

The story of your life

Ultimately, Family.me helps you build a narrative that provides a sense of meaning; you get to have your superhero origin story, as well.

To further personalize the experience, the team opted for .ME domain that makes any user of this social network feel like the platform was designed specifically for them (and their relatives, of course).

Want to learn more about your ancestors? Test Family.me with your loved ones and build a bigger narrative about your life than the one you are already familiar with.