Another free genealogy social networking site called Famillion has been in the news. It’s headquartered in Israel (as is MyHeritage, which recently purchased Pearl Street Software).

Famillion, which has family tree building capabilities, photo albums and profile pages, says its Tree Merging Technology will locate overlaps in trees and suggest relationships (this sounds similar to the SmartMatching feature in Pearl Street’s languishing GenCircles pedigree database).

Famillion also just announced a GEDCOM upload to ease the job of entering family information.

The site looks slick and its “connect the world” tagline is noble, but the webmasters seem drawn to hyperbole. The About window says “You might… find connections to the world's Albert Einsteins, Madonnas and Bill Gates. You may find yourself chatting with Angelina Jolie.”

Somehow I think Angie’s a little too busy with Brad, Maddox, Zahara, Shiloh and Pax to chat me up online.

That claim and the celebrity photos on the home page smack of a too-obvious attempt to capitalize on America’s Hollywood obsession. The same could be said of MyHeritage and its celebrity lookalike photo search, though that site redeems itself with downloadable genealogy software and a search engine.
 
On the plus side, maybe non-genies will come to these sites looking for celebrity connections and get hooked on exploring their own mere-mortal family histories.

Meanwhile, we’ll research celebrity roots if we think they commingle with our own, but we’re too busy climbing brick walls to be genealogical paparazzi.