Geni, a new geneology website, is certainly growing virally.

I signed up a week ago just to try it, and added a couple family members names and emails….today I get an email update saying that my family tree is now up to 84 people!

Which is great, except that it’s going to rapidly run out of steam because the most recently added folks (great-grandparents, etc.) don’t have emails and are unlikely to contribute any further names to our tree because they’re all dead.

I’m guessing that means Geni is a great way to spread a very wide, but thin, layer of geneology across the world. But to go back more than 1 generation, it will have to fall back on the same old tools and techniques that others before it have relied upon. Or am I missing something?