WebBiographies

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**WebBiographies.com**

URL	http://www.webbiographies.com
Type of site	Social network service with a focus on Genealogy and Biography
Registration	Open
Owner	Private
Created by	Web Biographies, LLC

Web Biographies, LLC
Type	Private start-up
Founded	April 2006
Headquarters	Denver, Colorado, USA
Key people	Scott Purcell, founder and President
Industry	Genealogy, Biography, Social networking services
Website	www.webbiographies.com

Web Biographies is a social network service with an emphasis on genealogy, biography & memoir writing, building family trees, and online privacy.

WebBiographies.com was founded in late April, 2006 by Scott Purcell, founder of Epoch Networks, and a former Board member of the Commercial Internet eXchange.

In an interview for MIT Technology Review (listed below), he stated that Web Biographies was founded with a "grown-up" audience in mind:

"Like a lot of people, growing up I sat around the kitchen table hearing stories about great aunts and great-great-grandfathers, and very little of it is written down... A couple of years ago I thought, let's write it down on the Internet. But all the tools out there were geneaology stuff, for making family trees.

My partner and I were playing around on MySpace and were very impressed by what they were doing. But MySpace is used mainly by young people and to be honest, it's a bit of a chaotic mess. We said, "There should be a MySpace for grownups. Let's do it.'"

1 Family Tree Utility & Genealogical Resources
2 Social Networking Features
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Family Tree Utility & Genealogical Resources

The Family Tree utility can continue ad infinitum. For instance, if you've traced your family lineage to the Fifteenth Century, Web Biographies' family tree utility can accommodate it. Each family member or ancestor added to the family tree is instantly assigned a free account, so that users can upload pictures and stories about him or her without sacrificing the user's own storage space.

WebBiographies is also GEDCOM compliant, and users who have resources using this standard can upload that information.

They also have links to other genealogical resources on the Net.

[edit] Social Networking Features

WebBiographies' genealogy & biography/memoir utilities are combined with Web 2.0 features such as the ability to connect one's Web Biography with friends & family, and "comment" on one another's journal entries, etc.

Online privacy protection features are also offered to users of the service. Users may choose to have their blogs, scrapbooks, biographies, or family histories displayed publicly, or password-protected and locked from view by all except those whom the user chooses (such as family, friends, etc.). There are three levels of password protection options.

There are also plenty of weblogging features, and one's site is organized like a book, with customizable "Chapters." In addition, every biography page is assigned a unique URL (for example: http:// bio.webbiographies.com/username).

Digital photos, digital video, and .mp3s may be shared and/or stored along with users' biography pages. Users can "connect" to one another's biographies, to stay abreast of new journals, photos, etc. as they are posted.

Web Biographies also supports foreign language formats, and has many members from Eastern Europe and Asia.