Ancestry.com Launches New Family Tree Building Tools

The following is a press release written by MyFamily.com, the parent company of Ancestry.com:

Ancestry.com Launches New Family Tree Building Tools With Powerful Search, Save and Share Features

PROVO, Utah, Sept. 6  -- Ancestry.com, the world's largest online family history source, today announced it has significantly enhanced its website's search, save and share features, creating a more personalized, collaborative, family history research and social networking experience.  The revamped site provides more advanced tools to utilize the wealth of digital content available on Ancestry.com, including its more than 23,000 databases with 5 billion searchable names, which includes the recently added digitized and indexed U.S. Federal Census collection from 1790 to 1930.

With these enhancements, users can now build, organize and share their family stories through a variety of interwoven features such as Person Pages that provide a detailed snapshot of a family member's life events, fully indexed Member Trees, and OneWorldTree(SM), the world's largest family tree, which includes data from a collection of more than 500,000 user-submitted trees. Along with these newly added features, Ancestry.com has bolstered its free services offering, allowing users to create a family tree online, upload family photos, create life timelines and share trees with family members.  In addition, users who are invited to view a family tree have full access to the family history records and photos attached to names listed on the tree.

"Ancestry.com opens a doorway to discovery with endless opportunities to research your family story, save your findings and share them with others," said Tim Sullivan, CEO, MyFamily.com, Inc., parent company of Ancestry.com. "We are offering more easy-to-use tools to help users save time and effort to achieve better results, enabling them to find and share a richer and more meaningful connection with their roots."

With Ancestry.com users can now take advantage of the following new features and functionalities:

  *  Search: Upgraded functionality makes searching more efficient and accurate, instantly searching the site's 5 billion names. Multi-functional family trees become a search tool that helps users fill in the gaps.  Family trees combine content with convenience by prompting users with possible family name matches (through a shaking leaf icon), linking them to supporting documents and records, and connecting users with existing user-uploaded family trees as a part of OneWorldTree.

     Newly designed search tabs feature four specific categories that enable users to define their own search universe and readily access data easier than ever.
     -  Historical Records: Census records, passenger lists, draft cards,
        vital records, etc.
     -  Family Trees: Searches matching information from hundreds of
        thousands of trees in one spot
     -  Stories & Publications: Newspaper articles, personal histories,
        diary entries, etc.
     -  Photos & Maps: Photos of family members, ships, cities, buildings,
        maps of then and now, etc.

  *  Save: Person Pages can be created for each family member and serve as a storage location for a timeline of life events, stories, documents and records, photographs and other rich individual artifacts bringing individual family members' stories to life.  Users can build their own family tree on Ancestry.com or upload an existing family tree from a GEDCOM file.

  *  Share: Users now have control over who has access to their content --they can keep it personal, share it with friends and family or make it public.  Other members on the site can conduct a search and find whether a person they are searching for exists in any personal member trees and anonymously contact other users researching the same people or family lines.

To celebrate the launch of the new site, Ancestry.com is offering registered users a chance to travel back to the land of their ancestors' heritage through the Ancestral Vacation Sweepstakes.  Every photo upload* of a non-living ancestor to your personal member tree (maximum of 5 per day) automatically enters your name into the drawing.  The competition will run throughout the entire month of September, with the grand-prize winner receiving an all-expense paid trip to visit an ancestral place of origin of their choice.  In addition, 10 winners will be chosen each week for additional 1st, 2nd and 3rd place prizes.

* More information and official rules on the Ancestral Vacation Sweepstakes can be found at http://landing.ancestry.com/offers/sweeps/default.aspx

  Ancestry.com Membership Packages:
  Annual membership:
     $19.95 for the Family Trees & Connections
     $155.40 for the U.S. Deluxe collection (equivalent to $12.95 per month)
     $347.40 for the World Deluxe collection (equivalent to $28.95 per
     month)

  Monthly membership:
     $29.95 for the U.S. Deluxe collection
     $39.95 for the World Deluxe collection

  Free Services:

Ancestry.com offers free services which allow users access to various portions of the website.  Users can create a family tree online, upload family photos, create life timelines and share trees with family members.  In addition, users who are invited to view a family tree have full access to the family history records and photos attached to names listed on the tree. Users also have access to message boards, can browse the Ancestry Learning Center and Library and can sign up for free weekly and monthly newsletters published by Ancestry.com.

About Ancestry.com

With 725,000 paid subscribers, Ancestry.com is the largest online family history site and the premier resource for Americans interested in learning about their family history.  Since 1997, Ancestry.com has been helping people connect to their roots, delivering a wealth of genealogical data to customers. Ancestry.com is the No. 1 online source for family history information, including the web's largest collection of historical records.  Ancestry.com is part of a global network of sites under MyFamily.com, Inc., that includes Ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.ca, Ancestry.com.au, Rootsweb.com, Genealogy.com, and MyFamily.com.  For more information, visit http://www.ancestry.com/

Comments

[Ron Bestrom]

The "Interwoven" is the problem. The One World Tree takes data with anything close to the name and other criteria and interweaves it. I've seen children that were much older than the parents. The mistakes multiply everytime someone enters wrong information. I have found this Ancestry "development" to take genealogy back 1000 years.

Get rid of it before it screw up ALL digital records and we have to go back to microfilm, scrolls and parchment.

[Marilyn]

Just a heads-up. You are signing away rights to your photos when you enter the contest.

[Happy Dae]

Hi, Ron.

Contest? What contest?

So, even though you took the photo, processed it, and uploaded it, you no longer have any right to use it? Is there no justice in the world?

Happy Dae
http://www.ShoeStringGenealogy.com/ssg1.htm

[Ron Bestrom]

I did not write the photo and contest posting. But, there is a contest involved. I will not be entering. Do not use the data that Ancestry is blending. It is totally inaccurate.

[Carla]

Well, I really like the new ancestry. Just like anything else, you have to be careful what you "interweave" or accept.

[Andrew]

You are not giving away rights, you are assigning some rights to Ancestry as part of the competition AND ONLY AS PART OF THE COMPETITION. Without the rights, Ancestry could not publicise winners, or reproduce some of the entries to users or the press. What would be the point of winning and not being able to have the fact winnign entry or shown to the genealogical community?

The rules, in part, state ...
-- start --
Sponsor shall have the right to edit, adapt and publish any or all of the descriptions and/or photos submitted, and may use them in any media in association with the Sweepstakes without attribution or compensation to the participant, his or her successors or assigns, or any other entity.
-- end --

There is no reduction in the rights of the submitter, there is no exclusivity, no change in the rights or the rights holder.

[Linda]

Looks like I'd get over being surprised at the inability of some people to make simple distinctions. As soon as children can make comparisons, we have to attach different levels of confidence to information based-on the characteristics of its source. I hope those who have the skill to use computers and to do genealopgical research have the discernment (or can develop it) to know that they can trust some sources of information more than others. I find that each piece of data is clearly labelled as to surce in Ancestry.com search lists. The internet is an extention of the "real world" with many of the same dangers. Which is it? Are people stupid or just arguementative?

[Jason Presley]

I think the best answer to that is: Yes.