MyFamily.com, Inc. Changes Name to The Generations Network

The parent company of Ancestry.com and several other web sites has been known as MyFamily.com with headquarters in Provo, Utah. Now the company is changing its corporate name although the web site of ancestry.com remains the same name as always. Here is the announcement written by the Generations Network, formerly known as MyFamily.com:

MyFamily.com, Inc. Changes Corporate Name to The Generations Network

PROVO, Utah, Dec. 19  -- MyFamily.com, Inc., the leading online network for connecting families across distance and time, today announced that it is changing its name to The Generations Network, Inc., effective immediately.  The company will continue to serve families online through its portfolio of leading brands and websites.

Ancestry.com, Ancestry.co.uk, Rootsweb.com, and Genealogy.com together form the No. 1 network of family history websites in both the United States and United Kingdom; Ancestry's OneWorldTree(SM) is the world's largest online family tree

  *  Ancestry.ca, Ancestry.com.au, and Ancestry.de were recently launched to extend the company's presence into Canada, Australia and Germany

  *  Family Tree Maker® remains the world's No. 1 selling family tree software

  *  MyFamily.com, online since 1998 as a place for families to connect and share photos and news, is being overhauled and relaunched in early 2007

  *  The company also publishes Ancestry Magazine and over 50 book and CD-ROM titles

"The Generations Network has a powerful mission to connect families across distance and time," said Tim Sullivan, the company's President and CEO.  "Our company was founded over two decades ago as a publisher of genealogy products. Today, we are a multi-brand company focused on providing families with unique, interactive online experiences that help them research their family history, share and publish their stories, and find and stay connected to family members throughout the world.

"We felt now was a good time to establish a company identity expansive enough to encompass everything that we do, but also completely focused on the family... across the generations.  Over the past year, we've improved Ancestry.com through the addition of millions of new records, enhanced tree-building and family networking technologies, and by giving our members the ability to save and store their precious family photos and memories online.  We've grown rapidly in the UK and expanded our presence into new international markets.

"In 2007, we are looking forward to the upcoming relaunch of MyFamily.com, an exciting new release of Family Tree Maker, and our plans to make Ancestry.com even more mainstream and indispensable to families around the world.  And we're thrilled to be moving forward as The Generations Network."

For more information on The Generations Network visit http://www.thegenerationsnetwork.com/.

PROVO, Utah, Dec. 19  -- MyFamily.com, Inc., the leading online network for connecting families across distance and time, today announced that it is changing its name to The Generations Network, Inc., effective immediately.  The company will continue to serve families online through its portfolio of leading brands and websites.

Ancestry.com, Ancestry.co.uk, Rootsweb.com, and Genealogy.com together form the No. 1 network of family history websites in both the United States and United Kingdom; Ancestry's OneWorldTree(SM) is the world's largest online family tree

• Ancestry.ca, Ancestry.com.au, and Ancestry.de were recently launched to extend the company's presence into Canada, Australia and Germany
• Family Tree Maker® remains the world's No. 1 selling family tree software
• MyFamily.com, online since 1998 as a place for families to connect and share photos and news, is being overhauled and relaunched in early 2007
• The company also publishes Ancestry Magazine and over 50 book and CD-ROM titles

"The Generations Network has a powerful mission to connect families across distance and time," said Tim Sullivan, the company's President and CEO.  "Our company was founded over two decades ago as a publisher of genealogy products. Today, we are a multi-brand company focused on providing families with unique, interactive online experiences that help them research their family history, share and publish their stories, and find and stay connected to family members throughout the world.

"We felt now was a good time to establish a company identity expansive enough to encompass everything that we do, but also completely focused on the family... across the generations.  Over the past year, we've improved Ancestry.com through the addition of millions of new records, enhanced tree-building and family networking technologies, and by giving our members the ability to save and store their precious family photos and memories online.  We've grown rapidly in the UK and expanded our presence into new international markets.

"In 2007, we are looking forward to the upcoming relaunch of MyFamily.com, an exciting new release of Family Tree Maker, and our plans to make Ancestry.com even more mainstream and indispensable to families around the world.  And we're thrilled to be moving forward as The Generations Network."

For more information on The Generations Network visit http://www.thegenerationsnetwork.com/.

Comments

[Laura Kaatz]

Does anyone know if www.ancestry.de has any different content/information than www.ancestry.com - or is it simply a German translation of the main Ancestry.com site? For example, are there any German-specific databases that are included there, but not on Ancestry.com?

Thanks! Laura

[Dennis Lohr]

> For example, are there any German-specific databases that are included there, but not on Ancestry.com?

Laura,

The Ancestry.de homepage states, "deutsche Datensätze, die nie zuvor online verfügbar waren." [Translation: "German data sets, that were never before available online."]

However, all the major databases listed on the Ancestry.de homepage are currently available via Ancestry.com, and several of them are even free (Wuerttemberg, Germany Emigration Index; Brandenburg, Prussia Emigration Records; Meyers Gazetteer of the German Empire). Additionally, Ancestry.com does note those databases that are in the German language.

So the simple answer at this point would seem to be that there are *NOT* any unique databases available at Ancestry.de or if there are, they are simply not worth the trouble and/or expense of a subscription (a lesser man might comment on the prospect of trying to cancel a US Ancestry subscription, much less one that is overseas, but I certainly would not ....) Ancestry.de does offer articles about tips for researching that are in German, and I would suspect they are only available there.

The biggest things that I took note of are Ancestry.de's encouraging individuals to upload GEDCOMs, and their partnership with http://www.ahnenforschung.net. Overall, the site looks to be in its infancy at this point. My gut instinct is that Ancestry will see how it goes in Germany. If it takes off, they will offer more & more databases and could eventually offer a seperate "Germany" package in the US, much as they do with the UK/Irish databases now.

Finally, note that the Ancestry.com homepage has links at the bottom to the other country homepages. It would seem their goal is to marry these sites together, rather than make them exclusive entities.

[Bud]

The various Ancestry.xxx sites are simply different menus over the same databases... the differences are cosmetic and marketing, not content. The same user name/password works across the different sites.