Links to a variety of social media sites for Jewish (and other) genealogy researchers.

What is “social media”?

“any form of online publication or presence that allows end users to engage in multi-directional conversations in or around the content on the [web]”
–www.onlinematters.com

“the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers. It is the shift from a broadcast mechanism, one-to-many, to a many-to-many model, rooted in conversations between authors, people, and peers”
–www.briansolis.com

BLOGS

http://www.geneabloggers.com  a “mega-blog” about genealogy blogs; you can search all 1900+ geneablogger blogs simultaneously for surnames and town names

http://www.jewishgen.blogspot.com/
http://www.genrootsblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.tracingthetribe.blogspot.com/ [no longer being updated, but the old posts are still a valuable resource]
http://www.jewishgraveyardrabbit.blogspot.com/

http://blog.myheritage.com/

You can use an “rss aggregator” to follow blogs—Googlereader (www.google.com/reader/)

SOCIAL NETWORKING

In addition to the general social networking sites like facebook and LinkedIn, there are some specifically for genealogy networking:

http://www.MyHeritage.com (based in Israel)
http://www.genetree.com (for DNA networking)
http://www.Ancestry.com
http://www.familybuilder.com (affiliated with Facebook)
http://www.geni.com
http://www.genolink.ru/ (Russian site)
http://www.ancestralspace.com

JewishGen has some powerful social networking tools:

JewishGen Family Finder (JGFF) (www.jewishgen.org/jgff) “a compilation of surnames and towns currently being researched by over 90,000 Jewish genealogists worldwide”
List your own family surnames and towns. Search for other researchers by surname and town.

Family Tree of the Jewish People (FTJP) (www.jewishgen.org/gedcom)
Upload your own tree, or search others—coordinated with trees uploaded to MyHeritage.com.

JewishGen Family Links Database (Family Pages) (www.jewishgen.org/Family)
Link your already created family site(s) to the database, or use JewishGen’s simple tool for creating pages.

ViewMate (www.jewishgen.org/ViewMate)
Submit scanned photos for identification of people, places, artifacts, etc.
Submit scanned documents for analysis, interpretation, or translation.

MAILING LISTS

JewishGen Discussion Group mailing list (www.jewishgen.org/JewishGen/DiscussionGroup.htm)
JewishGen Special Interest Group (SIG) mailing lists (www.jewishgen.org/JewishGen/sigs.htm)
Search the Discussion Group and SIG archives (www.jewishgen.org/databases)
A list of genealogy mailing lists (www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~jfuller/gen_mail.html) (select the topic
Jewish Mailing Lists)
http://www.british-jewry.org.uk/

MESSAGE (QUERY) BOARDS

Post your queries about people and locations; search the boards for your family names and towns.

http://boards.rootsweb.com/ is a sub-site of http://www.rootsweb.com

http://www.genforum.genealogy.com

http://www.yourfamily.com/genealogy.html

http://genealogy.about.com/cs/surnamequery/

http://dir.genealogytoday.com/message_boards.html

PHOTO SHARING

http://www.flickr.com
http://www.panoramio.com
http://www.picasa.com

GEOTAGGING FOR GENEALOGY

Use Google Earth and interactive maps to display and share family history information.

http://www.mapyourancestors.com —integrates with trees on familysearch.com
http://www.ancestralatlas.com —upload your gedcom; Plot the life, migrations, and descendants of single ancestors and whole families.

SOCIAL BOOKMARKING

“A method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources.”

Diigo – http://www.diigo.com
Gather – http://www.gather.com
Digg – http://www.digg.com
Reddit – http://www.reddit.com
Delicious – http://www.delicious.com
Pinterest – http://www.pinterest.com

GENEALOGY WIKIS

Wiki: “A collaborative website which can be directly edited by anyone”; a tool for collective editing of
online content.

Family Search Research Wiki: https://www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Main_Page
Some other genealogy wikis:
http://www.wikitree.com
http://www.jgene.org (Jewish genealogy wiki)
http://www.werelate.org
http://www.genealowiki.com