TribalJunction is yet another social genealogy site. It was founded by Javier Colayco.
The press release calls Tribal Junction "an innovative new web site", and quotes Jay Colayco as saying that "Tribal Junction’s fusion of genealogy into a social platform sets it apart from existing social networking sites.". All that is nonsense.
There is nothing innovative about TribalJunction. It is just yet another social genealogy site, and it is a fairly unremarkable one, with little or nothing that sets it apart from the competition.
The site does not even specify HTML 4.0, yet it still does not validate. Like many "web 2.0" sites, it relies heavily on JavaScript, so safe browsing is out of the question. It uses Windows code 1252 (Windows ANSI) instead of the recommended UTF-8.
TribalJunction seems to have a focus on the United States of America. Most
American will eventually trace their roots back to Europe, but the site does not
even support English, it is Amglish only.
It cannot begin to compete with the multi-language sites such as Verwandt
(dynastree.com, a.k.a. itsourtree.com) or Zooof.com.
TribalJunction displays family trees in a Flash application that looks similar to the one used by Geni.com. TribalJunction features both GEDCOM import and export from the start. It does not merge your tree with other trees, but links between possibly duplicate individuals in different trees. It is possible to delete individuals from your tree, even when they are linked to another tree. TribalJunction even includes a "Delete Tree" command.
Alas, TribalJunction’s "Delete Tree" command is misleading. The "Add Family /
Edit Tree / Delete Tree" link does not lead to an actual delete command. It
merely brings up the flash application, and should really read "Add Person /
Edit Person / Delete Person".
TribalJunction allows just one database, and does not allow you to delete the
database. In contrast, the recently introduced WebTree does allow users to
delete their databases.
I tried using the tree, but find it hard to use. It is as slow as you expect a Flash application to be, and that makes for an inferior experience already, but it even compares badly to Geni.com. Geni has big "Add my Father" and "Add my Mother" boxes, and sizeable arrows next to the box for adding siblings or children.
On TribalJunction, each box has four tiny arrows overlaying the box edges.
These allow you to add ancestors above, descendents below, and sibling to the
left and the right of the box. However, the small size of the arrows makes them
a needlessly difficult click target.
Moreover, when I managed to click the box for adding parents, It showed a dialog
box with "Add Mother" on the left, and "Add Father" on the right side, which is
contrary to convention. If you don’t pay attention, you’ll end up adding your
father as your mother and your mother as your father. To ensure that the
interface confuses you, once you’ve added both, the father is shown is left and
the mother is shown right...
Geni.com has been working hard to improve the speed of their flash application, and supports moderately sized trees now - up to 15.000 individuals. I do not see TribalJunctions supporting even the small trees of just 5.000 individuals that Geni used to limit GEDCOM upload to, as TribalJunction’s current performance makes the original Geni seem fast. It is unacceptably slow.
TribalJunction allows you to customise your profile page a bit. You can upload a photo, write an "About Me" section, customise some colours and set an background image. The customisation page has many boxes that prompt for specific information, to wit your interests, schools attended, favourite music, favourite books, favourite TV and favourite movies. All that is perhaps too much.
A serious problem with the profile page is that you cannot choose to keep any information private. TribalJunction will display your date and place of birth to every profile visitor. You must provide both to sign up. I’ve discovered that you can remove the place of birth from your profile by replacing it with blanks, but you cannot remove the date of birth. I used the feedback form to ask for privacy settings, and that request has not been answered yet. TribalJunction does not allow you to delete your profile, but the privacy policy notes that you they will do so upon request.
TribalJunction’s privacy policy does not address profile privacy. The privacy policy claims that "under no circumstance is personal identifiable information released to the public or site partners", but when they immediately post all the information you have to provide to sign up on a profile that defaults to being public to the entire world, that is quite obviously simply not true.
A further worry is not only that "site partners" remains entirely undefined, but also that the privacy policy does not promise to never sell your data to third parties.
The TribalJunction press release does not mention it, but Jay Colayco has founded a variety of sites already, including
The different sites are for different things. Each site has a focus, but Colayco has to divide his attention among them, so you have to wonder how dedicated he is to any of them.
Worries about the unsatisfactory privacy policy are compounded by this array of sites, that all seem to have essentially the same policy that does not disallow selling your data to third parties.
It lacks the multi-language interface of Verwandt.de (dynastree.com) and Zooof.com. It is slower than Geni.com used to be, and it does not allow deletion of trees like WebTree does. TribalJunction’s privacy features and policy are unsatisfactory. There is not a single compelling feature to distinguishing TribalJunction from the competition. TribalJunction is an unremarkable social genealogy site.
WebTree ceased operation in 2010, see WebTree no more. The broken link has been removed.
TribalJunction ceased operation. The broken link has been removed.
Copyright © Tamura Jones. All Rights reserved.