Google Contacts and Geni
An open letter to Larry Page.
Larry, hope you will forgive the informality. My Mother did teach me better manners, but since I am older then you, I figured I'd just go with Larry.
Several years ago I was hoping like crazy that Google would buy Geni or Ancestry.com. As you can tell, I'm into Genealogy. But you don't need to do that, as Google contacts has to only have some features added to it and you can take over this space, not to mention also Corporate Directories.
Here is my proposal.
Contacts has recently had relationships added to it. Today you can add Mother, Father, Brother, Sister. You need to add Grandfather, Grandmother, Uncle, Aunt, Cousin, Nephew, Niece...... you get the idea. Next, for contacts that have a family relationship, you need to add, Place of Birth, Date of Death, Place of Burial.... etc.
So far, I would think that these would be fairly simple things to add to Contacts. Now comes the good stuff. First I'd like to be able to pass on to members of my family the information that I've created. I don't want all this just locked up in my Contacts account. I'd like to be able to pass on to my children and other members of my family this information. It's only created once, but can be preserved forever. Let me easily pass this information along to the Google Contacts of my family members. Then allow me in Contacts to create a Family Tree that I can either share, or download to Google Docs so I can share with Family members that do not have a Google Account. I'd also like the ability to select or filter on fields in Contacts and download this info into either Docs or Spreadsheet. Over a very short time, this information would allow all of us to see if it is really only six degrees of separation between all of us.
I'd also like to see the same thing on the corporate side. Today I can add company name and add Manager as a relationship. With just this information I should be able to create corporate
directories that I can print out, share or download to Google Docs.
One last favor to ask while I'm on the subject of contacts. Other then Google Contacts, the only other place that I have contacts is LinkedIn. Please work out a deal with them so that my Google Contacts and my 1st degree contacts on LinkedIn stay synced up both ways. I would view this as a win win for both companies.
These updates to Contacts would also improve the quality of my Circles on Google +.
Keep up the good work and Thanks.
Larry, hope you will forgive the informality. My Mother did teach me better manners, but since I am older then you, I figured I'd just go with Larry.
Several years ago I was hoping like crazy that Google would buy Geni or Ancestry.com. As you can tell, I'm into Genealogy. But you don't need to do that, as Google contacts has to only have some features added to it and you can take over this space, not to mention also Corporate Directories.
Here is my proposal.
Contacts has recently had relationships added to it. Today you can add Mother, Father, Brother, Sister. You need to add Grandfather, Grandmother, Uncle, Aunt, Cousin, Nephew, Niece...... you get the idea. Next, for contacts that have a family relationship, you need to add, Place of Birth, Date of Death, Place of Burial.... etc.
So far, I would think that these would be fairly simple things to add to Contacts. Now comes the good stuff. First I'd like to be able to pass on to members of my family the information that I've created. I don't want all this just locked up in my Contacts account. I'd like to be able to pass on to my children and other members of my family this information. It's only created once, but can be preserved forever. Let me easily pass this information along to the Google Contacts of my family members. Then allow me in Contacts to create a Family Tree that I can either share, or download to Google Docs so I can share with Family members that do not have a Google Account. I'd also like the ability to select or filter on fields in Contacts and download this info into either Docs or Spreadsheet. Over a very short time, this information would allow all of us to see if it is really only six degrees of separation between all of us.
I'd also like to see the same thing on the corporate side. Today I can add company name and add Manager as a relationship. With just this information I should be able to create corporate
directories that I can print out, share or download to Google Docs.
One last favor to ask while I'm on the subject of contacts. Other then Google Contacts, the only other place that I have contacts is LinkedIn. Please work out a deal with them so that my Google Contacts and my 1st degree contacts on LinkedIn stay synced up both ways. I would view this as a win win for both companies.
These updates to Contacts would also improve the quality of my Circles on Google +.
Keep up the good work and Thanks.
Comments
Post a Comment