Who Was That Person?

Archive for the ‘Websites’ Category

In my last post I mentioned re-inventing the Rec2Gen site as a place for genealogical and historical memorabilia. Immediately thereafter i got distracted by other projects so that went on the back-burner. It will get done eventually, but not yet.

I have now removed completely the Erie County site. In retrospect it was doomed to failure, but I never bothered to analyze the potential at the beginning. It included a big city (Buffalo) so I figured there would be plenty of interest — but after a full year or operation I had only two free subscribers. Where did I go wrong?

My previous experience with a genealogical site was my Irish DigDat (for Digital Data) site. Begun in March 2003, that site has had over 17,000 people join at the free level. Now I never expected a Buffalo NY site could match that kind of response, but somehow I thought it might be 10% or even 5% as much, which would be sufficient.

After all, Buffalo had a population of about 350,000 in 1900. The population of Ireland in 1901 was just over 3.2 million, so Buffalo had roughly 10% as many people as all of Ireland. That ignores the very different historical trends however. Buffalo had grown up from essentially nothing in 1800. Ireland had been experiencing a long and consistent decline in numbers, due primarily to emigration. In 1880/1881 the population of Buffalo was only about 4% that of Ireland, and in 1840/1841 Buffalo had only 2/10 of one percent of the population in Ireland.

Beyond the sheer numbers, the dynamics were quite distinct as well. Buffalo records are for the most part well preserved and readily available, so people searching Buffalo ancestry tend to complete their research in a fairly limited time span. Irish research is never-ending, there are too few records, too widely dispersed. And it goes much further back than just the 19th century. So people who joined DigDat nine years ago are still returning to the site and comparing information there to new clues discovered elsewhere. Very few people who did Buffalo research nine years ago need to continue working on lines there.

I have learned my lesson. Hopefully my other projects will attract a wider audience. ClassyArts.com, for example, is fast becoming the best source for information on historic photographers. Several thousand photographs are available, but the heart of the project is the database of photographer names, locations and dates — which now has almost 90,000 records, and continues to grow.

My new project is AmTiquing — a site where people interested in antiques and collectibles can share information, plus a directory of antiques and collectibles dealers. That is certainly a large target audience, but it is also a competitive arena. I think there is room for a site such as I have envisioned, where people share their expertise and finds, or offer items for sale. Because it is such a broad subject area, a key value of my site will be the ability for people to personalize it to a very narrow and specific interest area, so they do not need to wade through the tons of material on subjects that do not interest them to find the gems they seek.