What are third/fourth/fifth cousins? They are descendants of your ancestors that you never knew you had. Almost every week I make contact with new distant cousins through Geni.com and I love it. So far I have discovered family in:

Argentina
Puerto Rico (previously living in Cuba)
Miami
Spain
Israel

There are several cousins who I know of that I have not been able to contact yet, but I know I will some day.

Here are a couple of stories for you:

1) One of my Kreplak cousins wrote this amazing story a while back when I just started my research:

12 years ago I went to the US after the army and I worked in a moving company. One Sunday I was at home and and a friend that owns a different moving company ask me to do him a favor and do a job for him. I went because he was my friend. When I got to the customer's house I was amazed to see it was a Kreplak family in Florida! It was unbelievable! When they opened the door I told them to look at my ID. They were in shock. We were relatives!

2) Here's another story that will amaze you:

My wife's uncle, Glenn, met a couple in Florida and the wife's maiden name turned out to be Hytowitz. Since it is such an uncommon name they tried to see how they were related but could not make the connection. A few weeks ago I got a response from another Hytowitz on Geni. I have about 8 Hytowitz families in my database and have not been able to link them all up yet. Turns out that this man is in one of these trees and he lives in one of the Atlanta suburbs. I gave him a call and we had a great conversation. Later that evening, I sent both him and uncle Glenn and e-mail to introduce them to each other. After a little discussion it turns out that the woman in Florida that known Glenn is a cousin of the man from Atlanta. The families have lost contact about a decade ago. What a small world.

3) You may have read my post detailing how my cousin from Argentina found the blog while Googling his surname. I have been able to contact him and get him on the Geni Tree. He had a few changes to make, like adding another brother! I also got in touch with third cousins in Spain, Miami and Barcelona through Geni. One thing I try to do every time I see that someone has joined the tree is to send them a quick message and welcome them to the tree and see if they have any questions.

Geni is a great site but I still have my issues with the speed of the site and the lack of an admin tool that will give me access to everything that is happening in my tree. I am also working with the folks at MyHeritage by giving them feedback on some of the features and functionality of their site. If you haven't checked it out, you should see how cool their photo tagging is and what celebrity you look like.