Patent ID: 8224821

Claim:
A method of building a genealogical tree of related individuals, comprising: providing a database comprising nodes, each node including identifying information relating to an individual; providing access to the database to one or more users; providing a first account associated with a first user, the first account comprising a plurality of nodes linked together so as to form a genealogical record of the first user; providing a second account associated with a second user, the second account comprising a plurality of nodes linked together so as to form a genealogical record of the second user; identifying a first node from the first account and a second node from the second account based on the first and second nodes representing the same individual within respective genealogical records of the first and second user; linking the first node with the second node; modifying the second node based on input from the second user; and notifying the first user of changes initiated by the second user related to the second node.