There are a number of web sites - free and subscription based - that have online family trees submitted by genealogy researchers. These web sites include:
1) Ancestry - One World Tree (subscription)- OneWorldTree gathers family trees and family history records for millions of people, analyzes the birth, death and marriage data and then displays the most probable matches for your ancestors. Users can upload a GEDCOM file with their research data.
2) Ancestry - Public Member Trees and Personal Member Trees (subscription) - Public Member Trees contains family trees submitted to Ancestry by users who have indicated that their tree can be viewed by all Ancestry members, while Personal Member Trees can be viewed only by Ancestry members who have been granted permission to see the tree. These trees can change over time as users edit, remove, or otherwise modify the data in their trees. You can contact the owner of the tree to get more information. Users can upload a GEDCOM file with their research data.
3) Ancestry World Tree and Rootsweb WorldConnect (free) - These databases contain the same information submitted by users to either Ancestry World Tree or the Rootsweb WorldConnect database. The data can be viewed for free by all researchers. The data can change over time as users edit, remove or add data in their trees. You can contact the owner of the tree to get more information. Users can upload a GEDCOM file with their research data.
4) World Family Tree (subscription) - The world's largest collection of family trees --- just waiting for you to research online anytime. Add an average of 600 names to your family tree with just one successful search result. The opportunity to explore more by contacting the person who contributed a tree. Users can upload a GEDCOM file with their research data.
5) Kindred Konnections (subscription) - The Ancestry Archive is a database that contains information from GEDCOM files that have been submitted to us, as well as information from files that we have indexed from the internet. With a paid subscription you can view the pedigree, notes, and submitter information, and download the family trees of your choice. The MyTrees PLUS Search will take every name in your file and compare it to every name in our database. With a paid subscription you will have access to a list of all the matches, saving you hours of research time.
6) One Great Family (subscription) - OneGreatFamily is a single, shared familytree built by people all over the world.The OneGreatFamily Tree is a powerful genealogy database that is shared and built by people like you from all over the world. Everyone's genealogy ties into the OneGreatFamily Tree.
7) WeRelate (free) - WeRelate is a free public-service wiki for genealogy sponsored by the Foundation for On-Line Genealogy, Inc. in partnership with the Allen County Public Library. We are the world's largest genealogy wiki with pages for over 350,000 people and growing. Our goal is to be the number one community website for genealogy. At WeRelate you can connect with other researchers and cooperatively work on web pages for your ancestors. Your research can be documented completely online. You can upload GEDCOM files, upload and annotate scanned documents and photos, include family stories and biographies, and generate maps of your ancestors' life events.
8) Geni (free) - Geni is a tool for understanding and staying in touch with your family. Geni lets you create a family tree through our fun simple interface. You can expand your tree by adding relatives' email addresses. They will be invited to join your tree and can add other relatives. Your tree will continue to grow as relatives invite other relatives. Users have to input all data by typing it into the forms on the web site.
9) FamilyLink (free) - FamilyLink is a social network Web site that provides an innovative platform to connect with individuals, research family history, and preserve memories. At FamilyLink, users set up a unique personal profile that can be viewed by individuals throughout the world. Users have to input all data by typing it into the forms on the web site.
I did not include the LDS online databases (the IGI, Ancestral File and Pedigree Resource File) since you cannot get "Family Tree" information from them directly. FamilySearch Inc. will be providing a user-contributed family tree database, similar to the Ancestry Member Trees, in the future - perhaps in late 2007.
The purpose of each of these sites is to provide a means for genealogy researchers to share their genealogy data with other researchers. The "social networking" sites want the users to network with their family members and other researchers in order to share information and obtain more information through the network.
I know that there are additional online genealogy databases similar to the ones above - if you know of one, please make a comment here, or email me at CVGenealogy@gmail.com, and I will add it to the list.
