awesome ... love this idea :)

Solid idea. What a great way for individuals to both express themselves in a creative manner to their off line peers, while at the same time create an online persona for those whom they have never personally met. Search for interesting people with similar quirks, interests, fetishes, problems. What kind of music do they like? Where do they hang out? There are lots of affiliate and product placement opportunities...

I see this as a subtle variation of a common function within a much larger genealogy website. On its own, how would this service make any money?

Great idea...
Making money by (just brainstorming a little bit):
- Paid accounts? (Will people pay for it... I don't know...)
- Donations. (Always worth to try off course)
- Ads? (Just make sure you don't advertise for other family tree sites =P) -> But... people don't like ads, so you don't should put too many of them on you website (will it make enough money?)

The cougar is back!
Also always: original ideas.
Love this one, although I don't see it making money.
Tommy

Would a low volume printing solution be of use to you. Family trees could be printed out in book form

Rich

I think this would be a cool idea, but I think it would get more use as an app onto an existing social network such as Myspace or Facebook.

Hey Coug...welcome back...nice niche product..sounds fun.

"eventually creating a massive forest of dysfunctionality" lol. good stuff.

So how would this be different than my real family?

I love it.

Yeah you father will be einstein and your mother Ma Flodder great, go for it.

I can see someone doing something from the bible and somehow getting to themselves. :S

How will it make money if this was a plug in? (That is ff you chose to make a plug-in the other comments talked about)

How would the tree be organized? Most trees are set up by DNA relation.

What would the friend tree look like? If it is organized the same as geni.com and other other family tree services. Nothing stops them from simply changing like 4-5 words to become this idea.

Hover Dam! Why can't CH make a edit button! I hate it when I see dumb little errors in my spelling right after I post.

How would you roll this out?

I can see this getting off the ground as a FaceBook module (there's already family tree apps there) as you don't have to build all the people gathering infrastructure. But the core idea of what you're adding on to Family Tree apps... that of inappropriate relationships. I don't see that as compelling myself. I wouldn't bother to add any friends as "crazy uncles".

I'm not going to vote it crazy low because even if I'm not the target market, I see a million other people using social networking sites in ways I don't find interesting... so maybe others will appreciate this. Vampires on FaceBook... what is with that?

So its do-able, and original. But I'd like to see the hey-this-is-fun explained more. The final product is a wacky family tree?

Sorry, should have used "Strikingly Handsome Cousin Gord" as my example, maybe then I would have gotten the 5. :)

Great points, though. Don't know if I have all the answers, but here are some initial thoughts. First, it would definitely be a Facebook/OpenSocial app. Ideally you'd install the app and have a list of all of your existing friends you could drag-and-drop onto a new tree (or add branches to an existing tree if you were tagged in a friend's tree). This allows for a low initial barrier to entry and also takes advantage of the social graph for viral distribution.

As for the fun aspect, I see a few angles. First, for anyone who has ever gotten an invite from a real family tree and thought it was kind of lame, here's a anti-family tree that basically makes fun of the genre. Also, it is meant more for a group of high school or college friends who all know each other pretty well. In most groups, each of the friends have some sort of label. For instance, I was the nerdy one, my buddy was the ladies man, my other friend was the party animal, etc.. We would joke about it all the time, the "tree" would just be an extention of our real-life conversations. For example, there might be a spot for the "Geeky Great Grandfather" for me, the "Second-cousin twice removed that hits on your sister" for buddy #1, and the "Uncle who brings a can of cranberry sauce and a gallon of Old Crow to Thanksgiving dinner" for buddy #2. You could share this out with your friends, have a good laugh, and give them an opportunity to get revenge by creating their own tree/branches that make fun of you.

As for the monetization, it would be ad-driven to start, using a service like Lookery or FB Exchange.

I find the idea interesting. But, like I said before nothing stops other existing services from simply changing like 4-5 words to become this idea.

The idea is cute, but I agree with Red that it seems best suited as a Facebook app or such.