People Search Digest

After its five month launch, family genealogy and social network Geni skyrocketed to 5 million profiles. These achievements made it inevitable that another company would try and clone its successful model. Well, that “another company” is Verwandt, and it’s doing really well.

Launched in August, Verwandt is basically an exact replica of Geni - only entirely in German. Most sequels never do as well as the original, but Verwandt seems to be holding its own. In fact, it appears to be surpassing its carbon copy by growing at nearly twice the rate Geni is. In its first five months of activity, CEO Sven Schmidt announced that it has spread to six different languages (German, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, and English). There have been one million family trees and 9.5 million profiles created, which is 4.5 million more profiles than Geni had in their first five months.

They overtook many early adopters in Europe and South America, targeting localized markets and languages. Verwandt is even taking a stand in Geni’s home by launching in the US under the domain, ItsOurTree. It looks exactly the same as its German counterpart, but it’s in English. It’s free to sign up and explore the site, create a family tree, and invite your relative to help you work on the tree.

So what does this all mean? It means that search startups of all varieties need to start considering international strategies from inception. Either that, or get really comfortable having an international doppelganger.