I spent some time this morning on Kindo, the social networking site that moved out of its beta period yesterday. Kindo is “where families get together, build their tree, and grow.”

Ok, so if your family is anything like mine they’re littered across all four corners of the globe and you very rarely get the opportunity to all be in the same room at the same time (to be fair those situations are quite stressful and shouldn’t be attempted too often anyway).
We keep in touch mostly via email and Facebook (they’re quite a progressive lot) but really connecting, especially with those I haven’t seen since forever, is quite difficult.
The idea for Kindo was born from a need to connect with our families. Unlike any other social networking tool its focus is solely on families and what families would want from a social media site of this nature.
I think it was a school project that first sparked my interest in family trees and while there are many genealogy sites out there that help you create and nurture your family tree I have yet to come across something as cool as Kindo.

How it works
First things first, you need to register, then you start with the basic stuff - adding your mum and dad (you can invite them to join at this time as well). From there you can begin to add other family members (I didn’t add all of them as I was a tad short on time but it’s definitely something I’m going to play with over the weekend). By inviting those family members they too will be able to add their relations and so on and so forth.
Each member in the tree gets a profile page where you can find out what they’ve been up to and what they look like (if it's been that long) as well as make sure you never miss another important date again (I really hope this means I’ll stop forgetting birthdays – I think I’m on the verge of being lynched). The cool pruning function will show you blood relatives only (which is nifty when you have loads of people contributing to your tree). The site is also available in 7 different languages so pretty much everyone should be able to use it. 

Have a burning desire to find out why they decided to name it Kindo? Think Kin Do - check out this post about it on the Kindo blog. Apart from the blog , where you’ll be able to learn more about the site they have recently launched a forum where you can ask questions or provide feedback. The entire site is exceptionally user friendly which is absolutely necessary if all of your family members, regardless of their Internet know how, are to contribute. I’m definitely sending my Gran an invite – she is going to love this site!

I love the design and the usability – I could see myself getting totally wrapped up in this adding and adding until I ran out of family members. Looks like it’s already getting addictive and I’ve only been playing about for a while – oh, well I need something to help me overcome my Facebook addiction anyway.