Just a quick note that I'll be moderating a Technology Council Event : Social Networking as a Business Strategy May 19, 2009 - Culver City Social networking media are used on a daily basis to grow businesses and expand career opportunities. Individuals use social networking sites such as LinkedIn and Plaxo as career-advancing tools, even more useful in a down economy. Corporations increasingly see social media as a key PR, communications and marketing medium. Social networking sites and microblogs are used not only to build company

Hollywood-based Geni , the venture-backed firm which has developed an online, Web 2.0-style genealogy and social networking web sites for families, has connected the company's service with the popular Facebook social networking web site. Geni said that users can now connect their Facebook account to Geni, allowing users to use Facebook's standard invite tools to invite relatives to join Geni's family tree serviecs. The new Facebook connection also allows users to post their Geni activity to their Facebook newsfeed, the Facebook feature which posts status updates and information to other users.

Yammer offers instant messaging focused on internal corporate communications, and is the result of work by engineers at Geni. Geni is the online, Web 2.0-style genealogy and social networking web site headed up by former PayPal founder David Sacks; the firm is venture backed by Charles River Ventures and Founders Fund. Yammer, a Twitter-like spinout out of high profile Los Angeles genealogy firm Geni.com, has scored the top prize at the TechCrunch50 awards in San Francisco. READ MOR

Hollywood-based online family networking and family tree site Geni officially announced late last week that the firm has launched a new, Facebook application . According to Geni, the new application will allow its users to access such features as building family trees, getting family news and birthday reminders, and more. Geni is venture backed by Charles River Ventures and the Founders Fund. READ MORE>> ...Tags: Tags: geni facebook application social networkin

Los Angeles-based Geni , the online family tree and social networking site, has enhanced the firm's search features, telling its users that it is now allowing them to search any profile on the site, regardless of whether those profiles are connected into a user's family tree or not. According to the firm, the reason for the shift is that the distinction between familes which are and are not connected is becoming "less important," giving the example of 15 million profiles connected into the firm's largest Geni tree. READ MORE>> ...Tags: Tags: geni genealogy family tree social networkin

West Hollywood-based family tree site Geni has rolled out a slew of updates for the service, saying today that it has added features to help users collaborate with others, map out locations, and see recent photos. Tags: geni genealogy family tree social networking web Among the new features, the firm said it will now allow users to collaborate with others when building a family tree. The new collaboration feature--only available to paid, "Pro" user on the service--makes it easier for different users to view and edit profiles in the system, and merge duplicate profiles.

Los Angeles-based Geni, the online genealogy and social networking site run by ex-PayPal cofounder David Sacks, has rolled out two new features. In addition, the company said it has enhanced its Geni Pro service, the firm's subscription version of its service, to provide better information about blood relations; exports of a family tree to the industry standard GEDCOM format; priority support; and an ability to show a "Geni Pro" badge on profiles in a family tree. According to the firm in an announcement to users Friday, it has added popular holidays to its calendar, and also added new virtual gifts for those holidays which can be sent to family.

Los Angeles-based Geni, an online genealogy and social networking site, upgraded the firm's services last night, adding new statistics features and gift accounts. According to the firm, it now allows users to view statistics on profiles, and has added the ability of users to give "Geni Pro" accounts as a gift to relatives. Geni allows users to create online, Web 2.0-style family trees, The gift accounts will cost $50, and allow recipients to gain access to the site's additional features. READ MORE>> ...Tags:

Los Angeles-based Geni , an online genealogy and social networking site, has tightened up the firm's privacy settings, saying last night that it has added new settings which allows users to restrict viewing of profiles of kids younger than 13, and changed the firm's "family groups" defaults to a smaller set of relatives. In the new child privacy changes, Geni explained that it will allow you to control the viewing and editing of profiles you manage for those under 13 years of ago, so that only relatives and inlaws can find their profiles; in addition, no profiles for kids

According to Geni, it has completely revised its gifts, adding better quality graphics, more selection, and a focus on holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, and other special events. Geni also said that it has connected its birthday and anniversary features on its site to allow people to include virtual gifts with those greetings, add their own personalized messages to those gifts. Geni runs a Web Los Angeles-based Geni.com said today that the firm has enhanced its virtual gifts feature, the ability of the users of the family tree site to send each other birthday greetings and other gifts on the site.