The one time I built a family tree graphically was when my kids had a school project to do. We wanted to print a nicely organized diagram but couldn't do it with the tools we found online. We ended up printing out the information from a text file and organizing it ourselves on a sheet of paper. I don't know if I'd have paid for something or not at the time. It definitely would have been a one time use, though.
Overall I expected the interaction to be more like a modern maps interface (think Google maps) - zoomable with scroll wheel, click and drag to pan, etc.
The click to navigate seemed outdated. If I want to move up and to the right. Click the button on the right, now click the button on the top, now to the right a few more times...
Same feedback for the time line. It's a neat idea but I expected to be able to navigate by dragging it around.
Also, the zoom +- would be easier to use if they stayed in a fixed location. Having them centered based on the size of the zoom scale meant they kept jumping around. Really hard to click, click, click to zoom in.
If navigation were a little easier and more fluid I could see using something like this to create hierarchical diagrams. Right now it was too frustrating to examine larger trees.
I hope the feedback helps.