Twiggli Family Tree Generator

In 2017 one of my genealogy customers was looking through the client report I’d prepared for him. Although he was pleased with the research, there was clearly something wrong. It was plain that he just wasn’t ‘feeling it’. He needed something more visual than a dry folder of text and charts. After looking at a number of possible solutions over the next few weeks, I decided to design a family tree poster, which he could display on the wall and share with his friends.

When I delivered the poster, the difference in his response was astounding. He beamed with joy and pride, pointing out the different ancestors and commenting on their occupations. “Now I know why I like talking to the farmers in the pub!” he grinned.

We immediately saw the potential for automating the process. We got in touch with my old friends at Trivand Technologies, who had worked for me when I was a magazine publisher. It wasn’t their usual area of expertise, but nevertheless they were keen to give it a go.

We launched Twiggli at Family Tree Live on 26th and 27th April 2019, at London’s Alexandra Palace, and people seemed to love the look of our family tree posters.

We invested a great deal of time, money, and effort into Twiggli over two years in all, but sadly the website never took off in the way we imagined. Even making it free failed to attract users, and in the last few months we have averaged only one user a fortnight. Given that there were ongoing expenses for hosting and maintaining the website, and in view of the shake-up of our lives and the economy during the coronavirus pandemic, we decided to close Twiggli down as of 16th April 2020.

Thank you for your interest in Twiggli Family Trees, and our apologies if you are disappointed that it has gone. If you would like to know more, please get in touch!