It doesn’t appear to be mentioned on the Geni blog yet, but I received a Twitter update this morning from Geni announcing the introduction of “Geni Pro Accounts”. For $4.95 per month, Geni Pro users can get a higher level of functionality and support options from the site than is available to non-paying users. At their forum, you can read the following:
“Today we released the initial Geni Pro Account offering which includes these features:
- Forest GEDCOM Exports – Export your family tree and all connected trees into a single GEDCOM file (up to 100,000 total individual and family records) with one click.
- Priority Support – Geni Pro users receive faster response from a dedicated Priority Support queue.
- Geni Pro Badge – Identify yourself as a Geni Pro to family members and genealogists.
You can sign up for a Pro Account for $4.95 a month. There are a number of features which we plan to add to Pro Accounts in the following months. As a subscriber, you will receive instant access to additional Pro Accounts features as soon as we add them.”
I’m excited about this for several reasons:
- This move signals Geni’s transition to a “Freemium” business model, which may allow them to sustain their service for the long-term (if enough users sign up). 37Signals, a highly-respected software development firm, is perhaps the most frequently-cited successful practioner of this model.
- To justify the “Pro” label, Geni is likely to roll out features such as support for source documentation, which would make the site much more attractive to me as “the place” for my genealogical data.
- The Geni customers who sign up for Pro Accounts stand a good chance of being interested in obtaining genealogical source documents, which would make them potential Genlighten customers (yay!)
Of course the big questions here are:
- What proportion of the users who’ve been attracted to Geni by its zero-cost offering will be willing to pay for the ‘Pro’ features?”
- Will that fraction be large enough and loyal enough to help make Geni profitable over the long term?
I certainly hope that this new strategy proves successful for Geni.
What features would Geni need to add to get you to pay them $4.95/month? Please let me know in the comments. I’m currently preparing a presentation for the South Davis Family History Fair (to be held next March in Bountiful, Utah) in which I’ll compare the various web-based family tree sites like Geni, so your input would be greatly appreciated.