myfamily.com 2.0 Beta Adds Online Family Trees from Ancestry.com

The following announcement was written by The Generations network, the parent company of myfamily.com, ancestry.com and several other web sites:

Combination of Private Family Networking with Family Tree Building Provides Unrivaled Online Collaboration and Discovery

BELLEVUE, Wa., Nov. 19 -- myfamily.com, the leading private social networking service for families, today announced the launch of its Family Trees application through the integration of Ancestry.com's family tree service, enabling members to create and share family trees right in their myfamily.com sites.

With this release, myfamily.com members can now create, share, print and publish an online family tree. Users can start a new tree on their site or upload an existing family tree from a GEDCOM file (a standard genealogical file format) to their myfamily.com site. Site members can then work together to add photos, videos, audio stories and other information to each profile on their family tree. This new feature links myfamily.com users to the wealth of digitally scanned historical documents and family history research tools provided by its sister site Ancestry.com and is the latest in an innovative pipeline of services and features recently added to myfamily.com as a part of an extensive redesign of the site.

"The combination of myfamily.com's collaborative environment and Ancestry.com's one-of-a-kind tree-building tools creates the ideal online meeting place for families to share the present and discover the past," said Michael Graff, general manager of myfamily.com. "This provides a great opportunity for families to create and preserve their family memories as they get together throughout the country this Thanksgiving."

myfamily.com 2.0 beta offers free, customizable Web sites where families and friends can gather online to share the latest news, recipes, photos, videos and now family trees in a safe, private and media-rich environment. With a membership base of nearly 2 million members, myfamily.com has been the leading private family social networking site since its launch in 1998. Current myfamily.com 1.0 members who created a family tree on their original site will soon be able to migrate these existing trees into an Ancestry.com tree if they choose. For more details, please visit the Migration Center at: http://help.myfamily.com/.

"This integration of our two premiere services is a significant milestone and evolution of The Generation Network's mission to connect families across distance and time," said Tim Sullivan, president and CEO of The Generations Network, parent company of myfamily.com and Ancestry.com. "Combining the here and now with a family's past is a strategic and powerful combination, offering families an unrivaled opportunity to collaborate in a safe environment."

The new myfamily.com site represents a full-scale redesign of the myfamily.com service and is now in open beta for users to try out. In addition to the Ancestry.com family tree integration, several new enhancements were released this week:

  -- Custom Themes - allows members to customize the look and feel of their
     sites
  -- Rich Text Formatting - allows members to change font, font size, color,
     alignment, indenting, add links and add emoticons throughout their
     sites
  -- Upload and Copy - members can post videos and photos simultaneously to
     multiple myfamily.com sites, especially helpful for young families
     sharing content with both parents and in-laws on two separate sites
  -- "As-it-Happens" Site Update Notifications - immediate email
     notifications sent to family members as soon as new content is added to
     their site

One of the most popular new features of myfamily.com 2.0 beta is SnapGenie, a photo slideshow with voice narration that makes telling stories much more personal and captivating. Users can easily record their voice by calling a toll-free number and telling the story behind the pictures in their own voice.

myfamily.com 2.0 free sites will be supported by advertising and commerce. Paid member sites will also be available for members who prefer an ad-free environment. Details of the subscription service have not been announced.

About myfamily.com 2.0

Since 1998, myfamily.com has been the best place on the web to connect and share with the most important people in your life in a private, secure environment designed specifically for the family. Myfamily.com 2.0 beta is part of The Generations Network, Inc., a leading network of family-focused interactive properties connecting families across distance and time, including Ancestry.com, Rootsweb.com, Genealogy.com and Family Tree Maker. In total, The Generations Network properties receive 10.4 million unique visitors worldwide and over 450 million page views a month ((C) comScore Media Metrix, March 2007).

Comments

[Jackie]

What is the difference in uploading a family tree or part of a tree to Rootsweb or Ancestry or My Family.com?

[Debbie]

Family trees uploaded on myfamily.com 1.0 have the option to "not submit" to Ancestry.com's searchable database. Myfamily.com 2.0 does not have that option. Trees are automatically submitted to ancestry.com and anyone can search names on the myfamily.com 2.0 trees. Private on 2.0 means that the living are not searchable and all other names on the tree are available to the public. Very disappointing, as myfamily.com is no longer private and secure in regards to the family tree. For those who want to upload their trees to Ancestry.com and like the idea of having a searchable tree, this is not a problem, but for the many myfamily.com 1.0 members who chose to "not submit" their trees, this is a major step backwards. Anyone can submit a family tree to Ancestry.com, free of charge, at http://trees.ancestry.com/pt/uploadfile.aspx without being a member of myfamily.com. This link is the same one currently provided as the family tree feature for myfamily.com 2.0.

[Cliff Manis]

Dick,
Good morning to you. I have been reading and enjoying your blog lately. Great info in it, and I am a user of the http://myfamily.com private family website.

I still have the http://www.genserv.com GenServ System and it is doing well. We have several new updated pages on it and administration of it is going well.

Best to you, Happy New Year, and be safe.

Cliff Manis
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