Amazing that this idea was sitting unimplemented right under everyone's noses for so long. There are almost certainly more.

I think the reason these kinds of things aren't done very well for a long time is because of existing implementations. Would-be creators do some research and decide the market is taken, not realizing how much room there is for a great implementation.

Geni, Gmail, Flickr, Facebook, and the new Evite competitors come to mind as examples of people ignoring that affect.

Do you mean the bit about a user providing others' email addresses when putting them into a tree? Only, family tree making sites, including ones that spot possible "same people" between trees and tell both parties, have been around for years.

definitely - ideas are cheap and plentiful, no matter how cool they are.

Just remember that implementation/execution (no matter how 'simple' an idea is) is a bitch

... and initial ideas aren't often that special - they often change and evolve.

I'd get more excited about finding the people who u can trust, work well with, and who also have the craziness to either jump off the corporate/college safety net or to work their nights and weekends towards completing something worthwhile

The stickiness on Geni is awful. I invited 80 family members and go to log in about once every two weeks now. Most pepole feel that it's very spammy too.

My only worry would be that once you create your family tree, you have no reason to return to the site.