Everything you need to know about how ECO works, what it costs, and how your family's information is protected.
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EternalCurrent.Online (ECO) is a private network for families, Tribal Nations and communities. It lets you keep a living record of the people, stories, languages, and places that make your people who they are — on your terms, with your words, under your control.
Unlike a family tree, ECO is built around you as the center. Everyone in your network sees it from their own position. Nobody else can build it from where you stand.
No. ECO is not a genealogy tool or an ancestry database. It is a private place where a family, a Tribal Nation or a community keeps what it knows about itself, in its own words.
Each member sees the network from their own place in it: their own relatives, their own stories, the people closest to them. Everyone's view is a little different, and every view is connected to everyone else's.
A family tree answers "Who is related to whom?" ECO also asks "What do we know, what do we remember, and who taught us?" It keeps the answers for the people who come after.
Ancestry built a business from your family tree. 23andMe auctioned 15 million people's genetic data in bankruptcy. Facebook mapped your family connections and sold them to advertisers.
ECO is different by design. You are not the product. You never will be. No DNA. No government ID. No records required. No ads. No data monetization. Your network, your stories, and your vocabulary are never sold or used to generate revenue for us.
Families, Tribal Nations and communities who want a private place to keep their own stories, words and knowledge. That includes families spread across countries, blended and adopted families, faith and cultural communities, and Nations whose offices need to keep records on their own terms. Elders can use a simpler home page with large buttons and large type.
ECO explicitly includes every cultural and ethnic background — South Asian, African, East Asian, Latin American, Indigenous, Eastern and Northern European, and everyone else. If your people have a story, ECO is built for you.
Your Eternal is the record — the stories, migrations, relationships, and vocabulary that shaped who you are. The things that happened before you, that you carry whether you know it or not.
Your Current is this moment: what members share with each other now. It is kept for everyone in your network, and for the people who come after.
Most pages have a ? button in the bottom-right corner. Tap it to see answers for the page you are on, or, once you are signed in, to send us a ticket: choose a topic, describe what you need, and tick This is urgent if it cannot wait. The ticket tells us which page you were on.
Tickets are answered in order of priority during regular business hours. If you cannot sign in, or would rather write to us, email admin@eternalcurrent.online.
Anyone can start their own network by visiting sign up and creating a Conductor account. You choose your own network name, type, and membership. There is no waiting list and no invitation required to become a Network Owner.
If someone has already invited you to join an existing network, use the invitation link they sent — it will walk you through creating your account and claiming your profile inside their network.
No. ECO uses magic links — you enter your email and receive a secure sign-in link. No password to remember or lose. You can set a password later from the Settings tab if you prefer.
Just your name and email to get started. No DNA. No government ID. No sensitive documents. Your network builds from stories, relationships, and the names your family actually uses — not from records.
Birth dates, if added, are stored as month and year only — never the full date.
ECO is a Progressive Web App (PWA) — which means it works on any device through your browser, with no App Store download required. On iPhone, open ECO in Safari and tap Share → Add to Home Screen. On Android, open ECO in Chrome and tap Add to Home Screen. The icon appears on your home screen exactly like a native app, and it works offline for content you've already loaded.
ECO is designed first for mobile — every page, every interaction, every visualization is built to work on a phone screen. A dedicated native app may come in a future version.
Once you have a Conductor or higher account, you'll see a Create Network option in your dashboard. You give the network a name, choose its type, and set the initial visibility and membership policies. You are automatically the Network Owner. From there, you can invite members one by one or in bulk.
ECO supports nine network types, each with its own vocabulary and features: Family, Tribal / Sovereign Nation, Collegiate, Community (including faith, cultural, and diaspora groups), Faith (LDS ward, Sikh sangat, or general), Village (with regional variants for India, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada), Intergenerational, Military / Veteran, and African Diaspora. The language you see in your network reflects your choice — because your relationships are unique.
ConductorLight is invitation only, and those accounts come with one pre-configured network — you do not create it manually.
If you receive an invite link but the profile shown doesn't match you — wrong name, wrong family — do not claim it. Contact the network owner directly and let them know. They can correct the placeholder record before it is claimed. Once a profile is claimed it is linked to your login, so it's worth resolving before you proceed.
The person who creates a network. You are at the center — not the oldest person, not the patriarch. You name your network, invite its members, and define how relationships are labeled. Nobody else sees the network from your position. Nobody else can build it from where you stand.
Yes. You can be a member of multiple networks — for example, your own family's network and a network created by a relative. Each network is its own view, centered on its own owner.
ECO gives you a set of tools to build and explore your network:
Network Map & Tree — visualize everyone in your network and how they connect.
Migration Globe — see every migration arc: where people were born and where they live now, colored by cultural origin.
Stories & Share — share moments and memories with your network through an ECO Story Teller session.
Cultural Vocabulary — preserve the words your family actually uses — in any language, with meaning, context, and who carries them.
Photos — share and tag photos within your network.
Households — group members by household with their own profile.
Journey Replay — animate your network's migrations over time.
Network Quests — weekly prompts that drive heritage storytelling and cultural knowledge sharing.
Ask Your Network — a collective Q&A board where members post questions and the network answers them together.
Interest Matching — monthly discovery of shared hobbies, books, music, and passions across your network.
Private Messaging & Groups — direct and group conversations that never expose email addresses.
Events — create and share family gatherings, cultural celebrations, and milestones.
Future Arcs — encrypted messages sealed for delivery at future life milestones.
Every family has words that don't translate — terms of endearment, relationship names, food words, phrases that only make sense inside your culture. ECO lets you record these words in any language, attach meaning and context to them, and connect them to the people who carry them.
These words don't disappear when the people who knew them are gone. They stay in your network, for the people who come after.
From your network's Member directory, tap Invite Member and enter their name and email. They'll receive a magic link to join. If they're not yet ready to join digitally, you can add them as a placeholder member — their name and relationships appear in all visualizations immediately, and they can claim their profile later.
To invite someone who already has an ECO account, use their registered email and they'll be linked directly without a new sign-up.
Open any member's profile and look for the Journey tab. Add each location they've lived in chronological order — city, country, start date, and end date (or mark it as current). The globe and journey replay visualizations pick this up automatically.
Journeys are especially powerful for diaspora families — seeing three or four generations of migration animated on a globe tells a story that no list of names can match.
The globe shows every migration arc in your network — where each person was born, and where they are now. Each arc is colored by cultural origin. For the first time, you see your family not as a list of names but as movement across the earth.
Current rates for every tier live on one page, so there is only ever one place to check: see pricing.
There is no auto-renewal on any plan. Every renewal is a deliberate choice. We earn your trust every single period.
ECO has four roles, designed to match how you actually use the platform — from exploring it for the first time to running a large cultural organization.
Yes. ECO accepts payments from virtually any country in the world. All plans are priced in US dollars. Your bank or card issuer will convert the charge to your local currency at their current exchange rate — the same way any international subscription works. Because exchange rates fluctuate, the amount you see on your statement may vary slightly from month to month, but ECO's price in USD never changes.
ConductorLight is a free entry-level arrangement — not a public sign-up. It is offered by ECO on an invite or barter basis to early adopters, cultural influencers, and partner communities who want to explore the platform before committing to a paid plan.
ConductorLight gives you one private network of up to 20 members for 12 months. All core features are available: posts, photos, visualizations, journeys, the Energy Tree, the Globe, and the Connection Map. ECO Story Teller features (ECO Story Teller, Quests) unlock on upgrade to Conductor.
At the end of 12 months, your network enters Directed Dormancy — preserved intact until you choose to upgrade or export. Nothing is lost. There is no automatic deletion and no pressure to pay. If you continue promoting ECO during your Light period, the 12-month clock resets.
This depends on your tier:
Networks that have been closed or archived (such as completed class networks in the LMS) do not count toward your active limit. A Conductor member who completed a class last semester can still join three new ones this semester.
Directed Dormancy is what happens to your network when a subscription lapses — rather than deletion. Your network is sealed: all posts, photos, stories, relationships, vocabulary, and Future Arcs are preserved exactly as they were, indefinitely, at no cost.
Members of a dormant network can still log in and read everything. They cannot add new content until the network is reactivated by the owner upgrading their subscription.
This matters because ECO holds family history. The idea that a missed credit card payment could delete twenty years of your family's stories is unacceptable to us. Directed Dormancy means that never happens.
Complete, permanent deletion is always available — but it requires a deliberate, explicit choice. It never happens automatically.
You can downgrade at any time. If you downgrade from ConductorPro to Conductor, your active network limit drops to 3. If you currently have more than 3 active networks, the additional ones enter Directed Dormancy — they are not deleted, and you can reactivate them by upgrading again. No content is ever lost in a downgrade.
Yes. Everything in your network came from your network — it is not ours to hold. You can export your complete network data at any time from your Profile tab under All My Data. Your export includes posts, photos, relationships, journeys, cultural vocabulary, and stories — delivered as a structured data file. Your data leaves with you. Always.
Only members of your network can see network content. Your email is never visible to anyone in your network — it exists only so we can reach you. You control what others can see about you within the network.
No ads. Vendors cannot contact you directly — ever. ECO will build a network of vetted service providers that can help you turn your documentation or event needs into reality — yearbooks, family books, event photography, catering, and more. This is a strictly opt-in feature. Without you choosing to connect, a vendor will have no awareness of you as an individual user. Vendors pay ECO a flat monthly subscription for access to the system — not to your data. You choose whether to connect with any of them. If you do not opt in, vendors have no knowledge of the potential connection.
No. Your stories, your vocabulary, your network — none of it is sold, licensed, or used to generate revenue. We do not share data with advertisers or data brokers. Vendors in the ECO service directory pay a flat monthly subscription fee for access to the platform — not to your data. Your family's information is never part of that transaction. You are not the product. You never will be.
No. All network content is private by default. Nothing you post, share, or upload inside a network is indexed by search engines or visible to anyone outside the network.
The only public-facing pages ECO has are general informational pages — home, about, FAQ, and similar. Your family's names, stories, and photos never appear there.
Complete deletion is always available, entirely at your choice. Send a ticket with the ? button, or email admin@eternalcurrent.online, and we will remove everything — your profile, your stories, your relationships — permanently. There is no retention period after a deletion request.
Other members in your network see your full name, profile photo, cultural origin, current location, bio, and any information you've shared through Profile Pulse answers or Storytime sessions. They can see your journey entries on the Globe and your position in the Energy Tree and Connection Map.
They cannot see your email address, your login details, your birth date (only birth month and year are stored and shown), or any content you've marked private in your Privacy Circles settings. Members outside your network see nothing — your profile does not exist to them.
Not currently. ECO is not a genealogy database and does not import GEDCOM files. ECO builds its network from living members who actively participate — relationships are added by invitation and connection, not parsed from a family tree export. This is by design: ECO is built around the people in a network and what they share, not a list of names and dates.
If you have existing family data you want to reflect in ECO, the recommended approach is to add members as placeholders and build out relationships and journeys manually over time. This also ensures that every record in ECO carries the perspective of a real person, not a data import.
Yes — and this is one of the most important things ECO does. Alzheimer's and dementia narrow a window rather than closing it all at once. Inside that window, a person still has stories to tell, voices to recognize, and things they want the people they love to have.
ECO is built for the time that remains. Reminisce plays back the network's photographs and stories by person, by decade or by place — the faces and moments a person knows best, without asking them to search for anything. My Story holds personal memoir chapters. Future Arcs seal messages for a later milestone, such as a grandchild's eighteenth birthday. If your network has it turned on, Easy home gives an elder three large buttons and large type.
The interface is consistent and predictable on every visit — an important consideration for users with cognitive changes. Learn more about ECO for Memory Care families →
ECO has been designed with research programs in mind, such as dementia programs run by care organizations or study sponsors. In that setup, each person has their own private network, family members join it in the usual way, and researchers see only combined counts, never a person's identity or the content of their network.
Consent, reporting and local privacy rules are agreed with each program and its review board before anything starts. ECO does not make promises about any country's regulations on a program's behalf.
If you run or sponsor such a program, see the clinical program section →
In a program set up this way, taking part starts with consent: the person, or someone able to agree on their behalf, reads and accepts the program's consent wording before their network is set up. The research side, such as combined counts, sits outside the family network; from the family's side, it is their own private network.
Whether and how family members are told about the program is decided by the program and its review board, following the rules where it runs.
Yes — absolutely. The study/clinical layer is entirely optional. Any family can create a standard ECO network for a loved one navigating memory loss, invite family members, and use all the same features: Reminisce, My Story, Future Arcs, Migration Globe, Energy Tree. No clinical affiliation required. Standard Conductor pricing applies.
ECO is designed to serve as a living primary source for heritage language courses and Ethnic Studies programs. Networks built on ECO can surface real vocabulary, real migration patterns, and real family histories — not hypothetical examples.
We are actively developing partnerships with collegiate programs. If you represent an institution, email us at admin@eternalcurrent.online.
Language belongs to the people who carry it. ECO gives tribal communities a private, sovereign space to preserve vocabulary, record oral histories, and document cultural knowledge — on community terms, with no outside access, no monetization, and no interference.
This is not a general diaspora tool repurposed for tribal use. Sovereignty over language and cultural preservation are built into how ECO works at the foundation.
Teachings is an optional module for classes and circles the Nation runs itself: language classes, youth programs, time with elders. Each has its schedule of sessions, its instructor and its learners, inside the same network as everything else.
The people teaching do. An instructor writes each lesson, orders them, and shares each one when ready. A lesson stays a draft, seen only by the people running the class, until it is shared. ECO writes no lessons and supplies no curriculum.
Each day one word from your network’s own word list appears at the top of the Receive and Culture tabs. Everyone in the network sees the same word that day: its spelling, how to say it, what it means and an example. The word changes at midnight, US Central time.
When a speaker has recorded the word, a Listen button plays it with the speaker’s name. People the office allows see Record this word; the recording appears once it is approved. In the office, Roles and people sets this under Language and classes: Add and change lets a person record, and Approve or release lets a person approve recordings, keep a word out of the rotation, or show it only in certain months. The network administrator can always do both.
Only reviewed words from your own network are used, and recordings play only for members. If no words are ready yet, the card does not appear for members. ECO does not supply words or recordings.
The Work board lists jobs with the Tribe’s own employers and departments, posted by the office (often the TERO or workforce office) for members first. Only members of the network can see it. For member-to-member work, such as a babysitter or a hand with a move, the Marketplace stays as it is.
Members can add themselves to the worker registry with their skills, certifications and when they can work. It is their choice. The office sees only how many members are looking and which skills they list, never a name, until a member taps I am interested on an opening. Nothing about pay, benefits or employment status is asked.
The office records outcomes such as hired, and its report shows numbers only, never names. More about the Work board.
No. Learners are added by the people the Nation authorizes to run its programs, and requests to teach or join are approved or declined by the program's administrator. The planned class size is a planning number, not a limit; whoever runs the class decides who is in it.
Counts only: sessions held, people served, attendance. The report cannot carry a name or a recording, so grant reporting never exposes an individual. Attendance can include participants who have no account.
The seat becomes read-only instead of disappearing. The learner keeps reading what was shared and can still download their own work.
The Collection is an optional module: a curated collection the Nation runs itself. Objects, photographs, documents and recordings are entered with a permanent record of where each came from and who contributed it, kept apart from the memories community members add later.
A Nation may call it Keeping Place, Cultural Center, or a word in its own language. See how the Collection works.
They are told the item is held, who its custodian is, and why it is restricted, and they can ask the custodian for access. The content itself is not shown. Restricted material is never made to look as though it does not exist.
No. A curator can take an item off display and restore it later. A curator cannot delete it, cannot take it, and cannot make a contributor's material public against their wishes. Contributors may keep an item private and may withdraw it at any time.
Admissions is an optional module, if your Nation has it turned on, that lets the Nation open chosen Collection items to visitors as a virtual exhibit, entered with a pass code. It builds on Collections.
No account, and nothing is collected. A visitor enters the pass code the Nation gave them. There is no sign-up and no profile, and no name, email or device detail is recorded. Visitors see the exhibit only, never members or anything about the community.
The Nation does, and the Nation does. The Nation creates passes in batches and hands them out, or sells them, through whatever it already runs, such as a box office, gift shop or hotel desk. Any payment is between the visitor and the Nation. ECO has no payment step for passes, never handles that money and takes no share of it.
No. Every item starts as members-only and must be deliberately released. An item that is under protocol, marked sensitive, protected, withheld or archived cannot be released to visitors at all; the system refuses.
Nation Home is the Nation's own front page inside its network: a welcome, news, gatherings, elections, government, programs, resources, culture, lands and more. The Nation's administrators edit it in place, and upcoming gatherings appear from the events calendar.
Our Lands is a map of the Nation's territories and cultural places. Like the Atlas, what each member sees of a place is set by the Nation: the exact place, a general area, or only a notice that a protected place exists.
The Atlas holds the Nation's important places for its members. Monitored places are a separate list, kept by a monitoring manager, often at the request of an agency. A field visitor records each visit at the places assigned to them, with coordinates, findings and photos. A general member may not see a monitored place at all. A Word report can be made for one place or for all of them.
Yes, one item at a time and by name. The administrator adds the person by email; they are not a member and see nothing else in the network. A monitored place or visit, a Collection item, an oral history recording or an exhibit can then be released to them. For a recording, audio and transcript are a separate choice on each release. Every release is recorded and can be withdrawn at any time.
My Office is a menu group for people who hold an office role. It holds only the pages that person's role opens, such as the Grant Tracker for an approver or the vocabulary library and classes for the person who leads language work. Members with no office role do not see it, and it is not part of the simplified view.
Roles decide what a person may do in each area: see, add and change, or approve and release. Ready-made roles such as Atlas manager and Monitoring manager come with a short description, and the administrator can give each one the name the Nation uses. Titles such as Chief or Council member show under a person's name in the directory and on their profile. A title grants no access by itself.
Yes. A department records a request to apply. The request moves through the office's stages, and the people the office names approve it before it is prepared and again before it is submitted. The Grant Tracker shows where each request stands, and an awarded application carries into Grants and Reporting.
Yes. The office can keep its list of devices and the checks it makes on them. ECO stores what the office enters and does not verify, approve or track it. Issuing devices and keeping track of who holds them remain the office's responsibility.
Yes. Network status, under My Office, shows whether the site and the sign-in service are answering, checked every five minutes, with server response time graphed over time. ECO is a hosted service; a ticket can be raised and marked urgent at any hour, and tickets are prioritized and answered in regular business hours.
The Marketplace is where members offer and ask for goods, services, work, volunteering and childcare within the network, as free, trade or paid arrangements. Members settle between themselves; ECO handles no payments and takes no fee. A listing lapses after 14 days and can be renewed with one tap. It is included for tribal networks.
Recognition lets a community honor members for what they give, such as time spent with elders. The Nation decides what is recognized and what it is called. A recognition is confirmed by an elder or coordinator before it appears on the member's profile.
Yes. Groups are created and managed by the Nation's administrators, each with its own members, stewards and one of three visibility levels.
On the Settings tab, each member can say whether they would like to be a mentor or would like one. Once a month, members in the same network are introduced, one new introduction per person, and never the same pair twice.
A short self-paced course for people new to tablets: five lessons and twenty questions. Passing earns a numbered certificate, and the Nation's administrator can download the list of completions.
The Atlas is a private map of the places that matter to a Nation. Each place carries its name in English and in the Nation's language, what is found there, the foods, animals, documents, recordings and stories tied to it, and images of the same place across the years.
It is an optional module, added when the Nation asks for it. See how the Atlas works.
Only the people the Nation names. Every place is set as open, general area only, or named people only, and burial, ceremonial and monitored places start out protected. A member who is not named sees only that a protected place exists in that part of the territory, without its name or location.
The Atlas is never shown to visitors or the public, and a protected image or video cannot be opened by another member even if they are sent its address.
No. The map is drawn from the coordinates the Nation enters. No location is sent to any outside mapping service.
Yes. Staff the Nation assigns record each visit: the date, who went, the condition of the place, what was found and what was done, with photos and videos. A date range exports as one download holding a spreadsheet of the visits and the media files.
Three Atlas roles are given on top of a person's usual role: Field, Office, and Forestry. Forestry can read and export visit records and cannot change anything. The Nation decides what, if anything, is handed to an outside party.
Yes. A place can hold many dated images, each with the story told about that date. A slider moves through the years, and any two dates can be compared side by side.
Curators the Nation appoints add items from a single page: a title, a description, where the item came from, and a photo, scan, recording or document. The contributor's agreement is recorded with the item, and the Nation's own protocols decide who may see it.
The office of a Tribal Nation or other organization can have tools that only the office uses. Each tool is switched on per network, so you see only the tools your network has turned on, and only the ones your role opens.
Some of these tools are early versions, shaped with the offices that use them. See how My Office works.
ECO does not handle tribal enrollment, and it does not handle repatriation. It is not a NAGPRA compliance system. Those responsibilities stay with the Nation, its offices and its own processes.
ECO keeps what the office chooses to enter and shows it only to the people the Nation names. It does not make decisions on the Nation's behalf.
An LDS network on ECO uses the Ward & Faith Community template, which adapts the platform vocabulary to match how Latter-day Saint families and wards actually talk: Eternal Family instead of family tree, Ward Family as the members label, and a Service Board for community service opportunities alongside the feed.
The platform is entirely private and invite-only — no outside access, no public profiles. Ward records, family histories, and life stories stay within the network you create. The energy globe shows migration patterns across generations, and ECO Story Teller chapters can document conversion stories, mission journals, and family heritage.
Ward leaders can manage member access, control visibility of sensitive events, and share a network invite link with ward families. Service items, genealogy connections, and scripture references can all be pinned and preserved within the network.
A Sikh network uses the Sikh Sangat template, which reflects the Punjabi cultural identity and Sikh values. The members label becomes Sangat, the events label becomes Diwan, and the philosophy anchor is Ik Onkar — the recognition that community and individual are inseparable.
The vocabulary bank can capture Punjabi and Gurmukhi terms for second and third generation members who grew up in diaspora. The migration globe is especially meaningful for Sikh communities spanning the Punjab, UK, Canada, and the United States — showing how a family moved from village to city to continent over generations.
Sacred events can be marked with restricted visibility using the Sacred Event toggle, so a Gurdwara ceremony or family religious milestone stays within the appropriate circle of trust.
ECO supports a general Faith Community network type for Christian congregations, Jewish communities, Muslim families, Hindu mandals, and any group whose bonds are rooted in shared spiritual practice. The vocabulary adapts to your tradition — you choose the labels that fit.
Core principles that apply to all faith networks: invite-only access (you control who joins), zero advertising, no data selling, and a complete export of your network data on request. Your community's stories remain yours.
ECO provides five interactive visualizations, each showing your network from a different perspective. All grow dynamically as members are added — nothing is static.
Energy Tree — a multi-generational family structure showing every person as a colored node, organized by generation from top to bottom, with spouse pairs and parent-child connections.
Our DNA — a rotating 3D double helix where males sit on a blue metallic strand and females on a pink strand, with spouse connections bridging across.
Global Network (Globe) — a 3D spinning globe showing migration arcs from birthplace to current location, colored by cultural origin, with journey paths animated chronologically.
Connection Map — a map of dots and lines that shows how every member connects to every other, including cousins and in-laws worked out for you.
Ripple Effect — shows how your connections spread outward through your network, starting from you.
The Energy Tree arranges your network by generation — great-grandparents at the top, youngest members at the bottom. Each generation has its own color. Nodes show initials or profile photos. Lines connect parents to children and spouses to each other.
Use the Filters sidebar on the left to toggle generations on and off. When logged in, you also get Focus filters: My Family, Spouse's Family, and My Friends — each showing only the people connected to you through that path.
The tree reshapes dynamically when you filter. Spouse pairs stay together, siblings stay grouped, and the layout adapts to show only what you've selected.
Our DNA is a 3D rotating double helix built with the same family data as the Energy Tree. All males appear on a metallic blue strand, all females on a metallic pink strand. Great-grandparents sit at the top of the helix, youngest members at the bottom.
Each person appears as a black circle with their initials — or their profile photo if one is uploaded. Spouse connections appear as golden lines bridging across the two strands. Siblings sit across from each other without connecting lines.
The helix grows and shrinks dynamically based on how many people are visible. Toggle generations on the left sidebar and the helix rebuilds — shorter for fewer people, taller for more. The same Focus filters from the Energy Tree are available when logged in.
You can drag to rotate the helix, scroll to zoom, and hover over any node to see the person's name, generation, and cultural origin.
The Globe shows every migration in your network as an arc on a 3D spinning earth. Each arc connects a person's birthplace to their current location, colored by their cultural origin, with each origin in its own color.
Connections shows relationship lines between family members across the globe. Journeys traces each person's life path chronologically — from birthplace through every place they've lived. You can toggle Journeys on or off with the pill button.
A flat map below the globe shows the same places, and you can tap a marker to see who it belongs to.
The Connection Map shows every person as a dot and every relationship as a line between two dots. People who are connected drift close together, so families and groups form clusters on their own.
It also shows relationships you never typed in. Cousins, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, and in-laws are worked out from the parents, children and spouses already in your network.
On mobile, tap the hamburger icon to open the filter sidebar. Tap outside the sidebar to close it.
Each generation gets a consistent color across all visualizations. The colors are assigned from oldest to youngest:
● Great-Great-GP ● Great-Grandparents ● Grandparents ● Parents ● Youngest ● Friends
Passed members appear translucent in all visualizations. The number of generation layers adjusts automatically based on how deep your family tree goes.
Yes. Every visualization queries the database live when the page loads. When a new member is added, a relationship is created, or a journey is recorded, it appears in every visualization immediately on the next page load. Nothing is hardcoded — your network grows and the visualizations grow with it.
Simplified View is a focused, easy-to-use overlay that opens automatically for every member when they sign in. It uses larger text, bigger tap targets, and a streamlined five-tab layout so you can do the most important things without navigating the full site.
The five tabs:
Closing Simplified View: tap ✕ to close it for the current session — it will reopen on your next visit. To turn it off permanently, open the Settings tab on your main page and toggle Simplified View off.
Theme picker: a 🎨 button in the bottom-left corner of the view lets you switch between the four color themes without leaving.
Return to full site: the bar at the top reads "Full site is behind this view — tap × to return." Tap × anytime.
Simplified View opens by default for every user. To turn it off permanently:
Once turned off, the view will not open automatically on future logins. You can re-enable it at any time from the same Settings toggle, or by clicking 🔡 Simplified View in the avatar dropdown menu.
Yes. ECO offers four themes, chosen with the 🎨 theme button in the bottom-left corner of most pages. (The ? help button sits in the bottom-right corner.)
Void — near-black background, high contrast.
Deep Sea / Ocean — deep ocean blue tones, dark and easy on the eyes.
Grove — soft sage green, light background, natural feel.
Parchment — warm off-white, the lightest theme — ideal for daytime or print-friendly use.
Your theme is saved to your account and syncs across devices and sessions.
Inside Simplified View, tap the 🎨 button in the bottom-left corner to switch themes without leaving the view.
Each member controls their own visibility within each network. Privacy settings are per-network — you can be more visible in one network and more private in another.
Profile visibility — control whether your full name, cultural origin, and bio are visible to other network members, or only your initials.
Photo visibility — choose whether your profile photo and tagged photos appear to other members or remain hidden.
Contact visibility — your email is never visible to other network members under any setting. It exists only for authentication and for ECO to reach you directly.
Location visibility — control whether your birth location, current location, and journey history appear on the Globe and other visualizations.
Story visibility — choose whether stories and share contributions are visible to the full network or only to you.
Birth date — if added, only month and year are stored — never the full date. You can choose to hide this entirely.
These controls apply across all visualizations — if you hide your location, your arc disappears from the Globe, your place posts disappear from the maps, and your journey is not animated. The node still appears on the Energy Tree and DNA helix (with initials only if photo is hidden).
If you see your name or initials in the network but haven't signed up yet, look for the blue banner at the top of the Energy Tree that says "See your name or initials? Tap here to claim your profile." Tapping it walks you through linking your email to your existing profile — your photo, relationships, and stories stay connected.
Your profile photo appears as a circular image on your node in every visualization — the Energy Tree, Our DNA helix, Connection Map, and Globe. Photos are stored securely and only visible to members of your network.
The ECO Story Teller is the primary way you interact with the site. It's a warm conversational companion built into ECO that helps you add stories, capture memories, build your profile, and explore your network — without needing to fill out forms or figure out where things go.
It's included on every paid plan, from Conductor through Org Admin, for every member on every role. ConductorLight accounts get it on upgrade to Conductor.
The Story Teller asks thoughtful questions, listens, and turns what you share into something worth keeping. It never references religion or politics in generated output, and it maintains neutrality across all members of the network.
From your network home page, look for the Story Teller button or the conversational prompt at the top of your feed. Tap it and start talking or typing — the Story Teller will guide the conversation from there.
You can also launch it from your profile page to add to your own bio, or from a member's profile to capture a memory involving that person. Voice input is fully supported — tap the microphone icon to speak instead of type.
Journeys trace the path of a person's life — every city and country they've lived in, chronologically. These appear as animated paths on the Globe visualization, showing how your family has moved across the earth over generations. Each journey point includes dates and location coordinates.
The Ripple Effect shows how your connections spread outward through your network. It starts from you (or any member you choose) and moves out in rings: first your closest family, then wider family, then friends. It is a picture of how many people you are connected to, and how.
Add a place to a post. When you write a post, fill in the Location field — the village your grandparents came from, the house where you grew up, the place where your family gathers. Posts with a location appear as pins on the My Pin Map and All Pin Map pages, linked to the people in the post.
The separate Map Pins feature has been retired. Places are now kept as part of your regular posts, so they are easier to find, edit and export together.
Yes. Most text boxes in ECO have a microphone button. Tap it, speak, and your words appear as text that you can then correct. No setup is needed.
After uploading a photo, tap on it to open the full view. Use the Tag People button to select members from your network and associate them with the photo. Tagged members are notified, and the photo appears on their profile and in the shared gallery.
You control the visibility of each photo — you can share it with the full network, keep it visible only to tagged members, or make it private.
Households group members who live together under one roof. Each household can have its own profile page with a name, location, and the members who belong to it. This is especially useful for diaspora families where multiple generations share a home, or for tracking how family units form and evolve over time.
Stewardship lets you manage another family member's profile, posts, life notes, and journey data on their behalf. This is especially valuable when parents or elders can no longer update their own profiles — a child or relative can step in as steward without needing account access or password sharing.
You don't join their household — you manage their profile from your own seat. Multiple family members can steward the same person, and every edit is attributed to the steward who made it.
Stewardship limits depend on your subscription tier. Conductor includes up to 3 stewardships. ConductorPro includes up to 6. Org Admin has no limit. You can see your current usage and available slots on your Household page.
Yes. ECO allows multiple stewards per member. For example, two siblings can both steward their aging parents. Every change is transparent — the platform records who made each update. If family members disagree about content, that is a family conversation — ECO records, it does not referee.
Contribution roles are special designations within a network that recognize the depth of someone's involvement:
These roles are assigned by the Network Owner and are specific to each network. A person can hold different roles in different networks.
A passed member's profile becomes a permanent, read-only memorial within the network. Their stories, photos, posts, journey entries, and vocabulary contributions remain visible to the network forever — they become part of the network's historical record.
The Network Owner or a designated Steward can mark a member as having passed, which updates their profile status and adjusts how they appear in visualizations (the Energy Tree shows passed members in a distinct style). No content is deleted. Their voice stays in the network.
If you steward a passed member, you can continue to add memories, photos, and notes on their behalf — preserving their story as others share it with you.
Yes. Pets are part of the family. You can add a pet profile to your network — name, species, photo, and their own story entries. Pets appear in the network directory and can be tagged in posts and photos. They don't appear in the Energy Tree (which is for human relationships) but they're fully part of your network's living record.
The network digest is one email a month that sums up what happened in your network: new members, stories shared, words added and quests answered. It is for members who do not sign in every day but want to keep up.
You can turn it on or off on the Settings tab. The digest only includes things the whole network can already see, never private content.
Every ECO network can have its own private podcast — a curated collection of audio stories, interviews, and recordings shared only with the people you've invited in. It's not a public podcast. No one outside your network can hear it.
There are three ways to add an episode:
The Network Podcast is built for the voices that don't get recorded anywhere else — a grandmother's stories about partition, an elder's account of migration, a family's oral history in their own words. These recordings are preserved permanently as part of your network's living archive.
Yes. If your family has been sharing stories, photos, and memories in a WhatsApp group, that history is already a memory archive — it just lives somewhere that will eventually disappear. ECO's WhatsApp Import moves it somewhere permanent.
Export your WhatsApp chat history from the WhatsApp app (Settings → Chats → Export Chat), then upload the file to ECO. Photos, captions, and conversation threads are imported and stored inside your private network — searchable, preserved, and no longer dependent on a platform you don't control.
The import is one-directional and one-time. Your WhatsApp group is not connected or synced to ECO — you're moving a snapshot, not linking accounts.
My Story is your own memoir, told in your own words. Open it from My Story in the My Space menu. The page has two tabs:
Your conversations with the ECO Story Teller are kept separately. Each one you save appears under My Memories on your Profile tab.
You decide what you share and whether My Story is used for your biography. Write one paragraph today and another next month; over time it becomes something worth keeping.
Reminisce (in the My Space menu) plays your network's photos and stories as a calm, full-screen sequence. It is not an album to click through: you choose what to include, then sit back and watch.
Before you press play, you choose:
Press Play Memories and it moves on by itself, with no clicking needed. It is made to be watched together: sit with a parent or grandparent, including someone living with memory loss, and let familiar faces and places lead the conversation.
My Podcast is the management console for your private network podcast. It's where you set up, publish, and organize your network's audio archive — and where you record or upload new episodes.
What you can do here:
The difference between My Podcast (your studio) and the Network Podcast page (where members listen) is the same as the difference between a recording studio and a listening room. Your network members hear published episodes in the feed — you manage everything from here.
They look similar but serve opposite purposes. My Content is for editing. My Data is for reviewing.
My Content is where you go when you want to find and fix something you've posted. It shows all your posts, journeys and milestones in one place — filterable by type and sortable by date or location. If you posted a journey entry with the wrong year, or a milestone you want to reword, this is where you do it. Think of it as your personal edit desk.
My Data is where you go to see the full picture of what ECO holds about you — both what you've entered yourself and what others have contributed about you. This includes your profile, career history, education, passions, Story Teller session content, and anything that feeds into your generated biography. Each item shows its source: whether you entered it yourself or it came from another member's post. You can also mark items to exclude from your biography if you don't want certain facts surfacing in auto-generated bios.
In practice:
Both pages are private — only you can see them.
The ECO Story Teller uses an outside language service, reached through ECO's own secure connection. It helps with conversations, quest questions and biographies. What you share is not given to the service for training.
Conversations you save are kept in your network, under My Memories on your Profile tab. They are not kept by the language service. What is written belongs to your network, not to the technology provider.
The Library is a shelf of books written by members and read inside ECO. An author writes in short sections, adds a cover and up to 25 images, and submits the book for review against the published content standards before it appears. Authors see how many times a book was read, never who read it.
A tribal network can choose not to have the Library. Read the author guide and content standards.
Yes. At the end of a book there is a place for readers' responses. You can tap a reaction — Loved it, Made me laugh, Moved me or Thank you — or leave a short comment.
Readers see each other by initials only. Comments appear straight away. Any reader can report a comment, which hides it until the ECO team looks at it. The author sees how many readers responded, not what they wrote or who they are.
Photos are resized automatically to 2 MB or less, wherever you add them.
On a phone, use Wi-Fi for large videos; the upload can take a few minutes.
A Celebration Page marks a birthday, anniversary, graduation, wedding, new baby, retirement or any other occasion. A member makes one from Celebration pages in the My Space menu: a heading, a few lines about the day, a video, and a cover picture if you like.
Each page has its own link. Copy it, or send it by WhatsApp, email or text; it opens on any phone with no account and no app. Family and friends leave their wishes on the page, and the family can hide any wish. The page is not listed on search engines.
The video can be up to 150 MB, about one to two minutes of phone video. This is an optional feature: you will see it if your network has it turned on.
From Family calls in the My Space menu, choose up to seven relatives in your own network, so up to eight people on a call, and pick a voice call or a video call. They get a notification and an email with a button to join. The call opens in the phone or computer browser; there is no app to install.
Calls are never recorded. The only record is who was on a call, when, and for how long, and only the people on that call can see it. For a relative who is not on ECO yet, you can make a guest link that works once, for 24 hours.
Each network has a monthly allowance of calls; if it is used up, calls start again on the 1st of the month. This is an optional feature: you will see it if your network has it turned on.
Family clocks show the local time where each relative lives, with a gentle hint before you call: a good time to call, getting late there, or probably asleep. It also says "Tomorrow there" when their date is already ahead of yours.
Nobody appears until they add their own clock, and "Take my clock off" hides it again. Only members of your own network see the clocks. This is an optional feature: you will see it if your network has it turned on.
Easy home is a simpler home page with large type and three big buttons: Good morning, Tell a story and See my family. It is made for elders using a tablet or phone.
Any member can turn Easy home on for themselves, and turn it off again just as easily. Once it is on, signing in opens Easy home first, and the full site is always one button away. If your network has Family clocks, they appear below the buttons. This is an optional feature: you will see it if your network has it turned on.
Good Morning is one tap a day to say good morning. An elder chooses to use it and picks the hour they are usually up. If the tap has not come by that hour, the family members they chose get a short note suggesting a call. It is a courtesy, not an alarm, and it does not replace an emergency service.
Whose Turn shows the family members an elder chose, with how long it has been since each was in touch. Once a week, the person who has gone longest gets one gentle note, and a tap on I called moves them to the bottom of the list.
These are optional features: you will see them if your network has them turned on.
Conversational ECO helps an elder record a memory one question at a time. It starts with one plain question about their life. If the answer leaves something out, a short follow-up asks for it, such as who was there, when it was, or what happened next. Every follow-up comes from a list your network has approved first.
It works in text only. You can type, or speak in English and let the microphone write it down for you to correct. Nothing is translated. The answer is read back in the elder's own words, they can change anything, and it is saved only when they confirm it.
You will find it on the Share tab, and behind the Tell a story button on Easy home. This is an optional feature: you will see it if your network has it turned on.
Recipes keep the dishes your family is known for, the way they are really made: who taught it, when it is made, what goes in, how it is done, and the memory behind it. Members read the recipes shared in the network from Recipes in the My Community menu.
Festival questions ask an elder, as a day the family keeps comes near, how it was kept when they were young. Each member chooses which festivals and holy days their own family observes, and there is one question per day, never a stream of reminders.
These are optional features: you will see them if your network has them turned on.
Yes. Print keepsake pages (in the My Space menu) makes a booklet: a cover with the person's name, your network's name and the date, then one story or one recipe on each page, in large type. One button prints it at home or saves it as a PDF to send to a print shop or to a relative far away.
You can print your own pages or a relative's. A relative's booklet holds only the stories and recipes they confirmed or shared with the family; nothing new is shared. The Keepsake Book brings the same stories and recipes together on one page, in the order they were told. This is an optional feature: you will see it if your network has it turned on.
From What we call family in the My Space menu, you see the relatives close to you with your family's word for each one in large type and the English beside it — for example, Nani, "mother's mother." You can add your own nickname for a relative; only you see it.
The words come from lists for each language. Today there are Hindi and Punjabi, and Spanish, with a first list in Twi. A list that a speaker of the language has not yet checked says so on the page and asks you to have an elder check it. ECO does not translate anything members type.
Each member can choose the language they see, and the network's owner can choose one for the whole family. This is an optional feature: you will see it if your network has it turned on.
An In memory page is a page about the life of someone who has passed, seen only by members of the network. It is never public, and it is text only.
The network's administrator writes the page with the name the family wants shown. Your own mourning protocol decides whether and when the name appears: if names are held back during mourning, the page waits until the mourning days have passed, and if names are never shown, the page cannot be published. The administrator can withdraw a page at any time. This is an optional feature: you will see it if your network has it turned on.
Year in Review brings a year of your network together on one page: the photos, posts and family notes members shared, and the people who joined, each credited to the member who added it. Choose a year to look back on.
Network Quests are weekly prompts that give your network something specific to share — a migration memory, a family recipe, a word only your family uses, a childhood photograph, or a question about a living elder. A new quest appears every seven days and stays live for the full week.
Seven quest types rotate through the cycle: heritage, memory, connection, values, migration, milestone, and knowledge. Responses are shared with the network and become part of the permanent record. The response count is visible so members can see how many people have contributed. When a quest is live, it appears at the top of your feed; tap it to answer, or to talk it through with the Story Teller.
Storytime is a guided memory capture system built into your Share tab. The ECO Story Teller asks you a personalized question about a significant moment, relationship, or childhood experience — and waits for your answer. It never asks the same question twice.
Stories you share through Storytime become network posts, creating a living narrative archive that accumulates over time. The more you share, the more the Story Teller learns about what you have and haven't covered — so the questions stay fresh and personally relevant. This is one of the primary ways oral histories get preserved before they're lost.
Ask Your Network is a collective knowledge board on your Share tab. Any member can post a question — "What year did we first gather at the lake?", "Who knows how the holiday bread was made?", "What's the real story behind that nickname?" — and leave it open for the network to answer.
Unanswered questions stay on the board, where they prompt engagement every time someone opens the tab. When a member answers, the Q&A is posted to the network feed as a shared moment, building what your network knows, over time. Questions only you can answer are the most valuable — they disappear when you do.
Interest Matching runs once a month and looks for network members who share similar passions — hobbies, books they love, music they listen to, sports they follow. When the system finds a meaningful match, both members receive a private notification. Neither person knows who the match is until both choose to connect.
If both members opt in, the ECO Story Teller generates a warm, personalized introduction email connecting them around their shared interest. If either member passes, nothing happens and privacy is fully maintained. It is never visible to the broader network.
To participate, navigate to the 💝 Passions tab in your network dashboard and add interests in any of the available categories: hobbies, books, music, sports, food, and travel.
Profile Pulse is a set of rotating enrichment questions that appear on your Share tab. Each question asks you to share something about yourself — your career history, languages you speak, foods that remind you of home, places you've lived, or values you carry. Answers are saved directly to your profile.
The questions rotate through categories so your profile grows gradually without requiring you to sit down and fill out a form. Profile Pulse never repeats a question you've already answered. Every answer you give becomes part of the living record your network sees about you.
The bell icon in your dashboard header shows unread notification count. Tapping it opens a panel showing recent activity — when someone tags you in a post, replies to a question you asked, sends you a direct message, or when an interest match is found.
From your Settings tab, you can control which events trigger email notifications: new direct messages, tags in posts, and replies to your questions. You can also turn on the monthly network digest.
Yes. The Messages tab inside Simplified View lets you send and receive direct messages without leaving the view. Tap the tab, then tap + New to start a conversation — type a name to search for a member and tap their name to open the thread.
A red badge on the Messages tab shows how many conversations have unread messages waiting for you. The count updates automatically as you read conversations and as new messages arrive.
All messages sent from Simplified View are the same as messages sent from the full Messages tab — they appear in both places and your full history is preserved.
The red number badge on the Messages icon shows how many of your conversations have at least one unread message. It counts conversations with unread messages, not individual messages — so a conversation with five unread messages adds only 1 to the count.
The badge disappears for a conversation as soon as you open it. The overall count decreases to reflect the remaining unread conversations. If the badge shows zero or no badge, all your conversations are up to date.
Yes. Every member can send direct private messages to any other member in their network. Messages are delivered inside ECO — your email address is never exposed to the recipient, and theirs is never exposed to you. All communication stays within the platform.
To start a conversation: open the Messages tab, tap + New, search for a member by name, and tap their name to open the thread. You can also start a conversation directly from a member's profile page.
Yes. From the Messages tab, tap New Group, enter a name for the group, and add any members from your network. All group members can send and receive messages in the shared thread. Groups are private — only invited members can see them, and non-members have no awareness the group exists.
Group chats are especially useful for coordinating family events, keeping a sibling group in touch, or running a sub-community within a larger network.
Yes. From the Events tab in your network dashboard, you can create family gatherings, cultural celebrations, anniversaries, and any other milestone event. Add a date, description, and optional location, then invite specific network members or the full network. Invited members can RSVP. Events appear in the network feed so everyone stays informed.
ECO does not automatically delete message history. Your conversations are retained in your account for as long as your network is active. You can delete your own messages. If a network enters Directed Dormancy, all messages are preserved alongside everything else — sealed but intact.
ECO includes a lightweight Learning Management System (LMS) built specifically for ethnic studies, cultural heritage programs, and diaspora education. It is embedded directly inside ECO — students and instructors use the same platform where the living family histories and cultural data already exist.
The LMS supports courses, section templates, term-based scheduling, assignment tracking, and student progress reporting. Students read real family narratives and cultural records as part of their coursework — not textbooks alone.
The Org Admin account is the program coordinator. Each class they create is its own ECO network — for example, "ETHN 101 Fall 2026" is one network, "ETHN 201 Fall 2026" is another. Linking class networks into a single Program is set up with the ECO team.
Academic terms (Fall, Spring, Summer) are created once at the program level and shared across all class networks. Students can be enrolled in multiple classes concurrently — their enrollment history and completion records are tracked across the full program, not just one class.
This depends on the student's subscription tier, which counts active (non-closed) networks:
Closed class networks — those where the term has ended — do not count toward this limit. A student who completed ETHN 101 in Fall 2026 can enroll in three new Spring 2027 classes without needing an upgrade.
When a term ends, the class network can be closed. The program coordinator asks the ECO team to close it. Closing a class:
A closed class can be reopened on the coordinator's request — for example, to continue a course or review submissions.
Inside each class network, the coordinator uses the Courses tab to manage terms and see student work and grades. A program-wide view across all classes — each student's course history, and a roster across classes — is prepared with the ECO team on request.
Yes. Closed class networks appear in the student's Courses tab under Completed Classes. The student can view everything — assignments, posts, stories shared during the class, cultural vocabulary contributions, and their completion record — in full read-only mode. Nothing disappears when a class closes.
Program management requires an Org Admin account. Instructors within a class network use the standard coordinator tools available to Network Owners and Moderators. Students access the Courses tab available on Conductor and ConductorPro tiers. ConductorPro is recommended for students enrolled in more than 3 classes concurrently.
A Future Arc is an encrypted message — text, voice, or video — that you create inside your private family network and set to be delivered to a named recipient at a specific future milestone: an 18th birthday, a wedding, a graduation, the birth of a child, or upon your passing.
Unlike email-based alternatives, Future Arcs are never delivered to an external inbox. Your recipient must log into the network to receive the message — so it arrives alongside the full context of your lineage, not in isolation.
Future Arcs are designed for cultural and emotional content — the things only you can pass on:
Future Arcs are not a secure credential vault. The following are strictly prohibited:
Future Arcs carry meaning, not mandates. They are not a will, trust, codicil, or legally binding document of any kind. Your legal advisor handles that — ECO carries the cultural context alongside it.
A Future Arc is locked with strong encryption on your own device before it is sent to us, so we cannot read what is in it. The message remains sealed — invisible to everyone, including administrators — until a Keeper or Moderator verifies that the designated milestone has arrived and unlocks delivery.
They stay sealed and intact. Your network enters Directed Dormancy, which keeps everything, Future Arcs included, with no time limit.
See Terms of Service Section 5 for full details.
Yes. Future Arcs are designed to complement estate planning — not replace it. Legal documents handle the "what." Future Arcs carry the "why" — family history, cultural vocabulary, and the emotional context that helps heirs understand and honor the decisions behind an estate.
Future Arcs are non-legal, non-binding, and contain no PII or financial identifiers. They work alongside a will, not in place of one.
ECO Reflections is ECO's podcast — hosted by Isaiah Bakshi. Each episode features diaspora storytellers, cultural scholars, and community keepers talking about what families carry, what communities preserve, and what gets passed forward. Episodes are free and publicly available.
ECO Reflections is separate from Network Podcasts — which are private, per-network audio archives available to every ECO network. ECO Reflections is a public-facing show produced by EternalCurrent.Online.