Not sure if you’ve checked out Geni yet — its a social network that has gotten a lot of positive coverage at TechCrunch in recent months, and I have to tell you: I totally think that it deserves it.

Geni is super easy to use, and makes geneology something that any one can do and can make anyone *interested* in doing.  It has a slick Flash interface, so you can add family members to your tree, and moreover, can click and drag your way around the maps you create.  The best thing, really, is to check it out yourself (go on — I’ll wait).

I think its easy to get excited over Geni.  In my mind its ease of use and its topic (geneology) has the *potential* to be the MySpace or Facebook for the baby boomer set; or, or do for baby boomers (and older!) what Facebook has done for Generation X/Y’ers who had no inkling about social networks: be so successful and prevalent that it crosses the “chasm” to every day folk who are casual users at best of the Internet.

Why?  Well, it basically creates a slick framework for the creation of a social network for families.  And for folks who aren’t as familiar with fast moving trends in web applications (I’m careful not to sound agist here and I think I’m losing), who basically use their computers for word processing and email, this could be big.  After all, what easier and better way to get engaged, and enroll people into your social network than the most trusted people you know?

And you know that “hey that’s awesome” feeling when you finally get in touch with your best friend in Kindergaren through Facebook?  I can forsee the same thing happening for other folk who are using Geni, when they start seeing relatives they haven’t seen from or heard from in *ages*.

Currently they do have some elements of what constitutes a social network.  You can leave messages and update your own profile, but right now you can’t actually write or leave messages on your own profile (like a blog).  You can check out profiles of other relatives on your own blog and the like as well. 

The real issues, however, will be two fold:

i) creating enough stickiness: the average number of pageviews for a facebook visit is 20 — I have no idea what they are for Geni, but for me the novelty of the site wore off pretty fast after I created all my relatives that I knew and invited.  Since that time I know that I haven’t really been back.  Perhaps this is a function of the size of families, or, how interested you can get family members to start adding their own extended families in. 

ii) creating a real business model: so, other than selling ads, Geni hasn’t yet found any other way to monetize themselves.  Will they extend their revenue model to include things like selling swag with your family information on it?  Or go to a freemium model with some features going at a price (or a la carte)?  Who knows?

Geni has a lot going for it, but it has a few issues that it needs to take care of before it earnes the $100M valuation in my eyes.  In the mean time, go on and check it out — and I dare you to not start adding your own family while you’re at it! :)