To mark the first day of the 2008 National Genealogical Society Conference in Kansas City, Missouri, The Generations Network CEO Tim Sullivan has published a rather lengthy letter addressed to the genealogy community. He highlights several recently released content collections and product enhancements on Ancestry.com, and gives insights into some new projects on the horizon.
He starts off with:
At the beginning of 2007, Ancestry.com set out to accomplish four fundamental goals.
First, and most importantly, we committed to broaden and deepen the content that we offer our members by digitizing and putting online millions more historical records, both from the United States and from around the world.
Second, we wanted to make it even easier for our members to discover their ancestors in the records we offer, to organize and preserve their personal family histories, and to communicate and collaborate with other members of the Ancestry community.
Third, we wanted to introduce the joys of genealogy to millions of new family historians by investing in category-expanding marketing activities around the world.
And lastly, we sought to improve our listening skills as a company and to better engage our members in helping shape our products and services. While never satisfied with the speed at which we evolve, I believe we have made substantial progress, and that our recent past and short-term future illustrates some of the most exciting progress we’ve made as a company.
He the goes on at length to discuss new content being added, the international Ancestry web sites, soon-to-be-released Ancestry Community Profile Pages and also a new advertising push.
I especially noticed his comment of "We’re currently running a full-scale television advertising campaign on several national cable channels." The publicity generated obviously will be good for Ancestry.com/The Generations Network but I suspect the "spillover" will be good for genealogy societies as well as for Ancestry.com's competitors and partners. Anything that generates interest in family history in the mass market benefits many of us.
You can read Tim Sullivan's message on the The Generations Network's media site at http://tgn.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=121.
