Eric Shoup Becomes Ancestry.com's V.P. of Product

The following announcement was written by The Generations Network, owners of Ancestry.com:

Eric Shoup, Former General Manager for eBay Stores, Joins The Generations Network as Ancestry.com's Vice President of Product

Management Leader to Play Key Role in Bay Area Growth of Ancestry.com

PROVO, Utah, Sept. 18 -- The Generations Network (TGN), parent company of Ancestry.com, today announced the hiring of Eric Shoup as vice president of product for the Ancestry.com business unit. As a new management leader, Shoup will be responsible for the product strategy, product definition and design for the global platform of Ancestry.com, the world's largest online family history resource. He will lead the product management and user interface design teams. Bringing more than 15 years of product marketing and general management experience, he will be based in the company's San Francisco office.

"We're thrilled to have Eric Shoup join Ancestry.com during this time of accelerated growth," said Andrew Wait, senior vice president and general manager of family history for Ancestry.com. "Eric is key to the continued expansion of Ancestry.com and to our company's increasing presence in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. His impressive background and strong leadership skills make him the best person to lead this effort while nicely complimenting our team in Utah."

Prior to joining TGN, Shoup was at eBay for five years, where he focused on growing several of eBay's growing businesses, most recently as the general manager for the eBay Stores and ProStores business units. In a previous position, Eric assembled and led eBay's first global mobile product team. During his eBay career, Shoup also played key product leadership roles over different areas such as eBay Stores, Shipping and Merchandising.

Prior to eBay, Shoup drove key product marketing and management initiatives at Commerce One, a leading provider of global e-commerce solutions for businesses. While at US Interactive, Shoup designed and managed consumer ecommerce and marketing Web sites for established companies such as Lexus and Wellcome Supermarkets (Hong Kong).

As a new member of the management team, Shoup will work closely with a strong team of professionals in Ancestry.com's new San Francisco office, including Cheyenne Richards, recently promoted to vice president of marketing and a former executive with Avenue A Razorfish, as well as co-workers recently hired from Yahoo, Apple, Organic, CNET, Zenith Optimedia and Expedia.

About the Ancestry Global Network

The Ancestry global network of family history Web sites is wholly owned by The Generations Network, Inc. It consists of nine Web sites -- http://www.ancestry.com/ in the U.S., http://www.ancestry.co.uk/ in the UK, http://www.ancestry.ca/ in Canada, http://www.ancestry.com.au/ in Australia, http://www.ancestry.de/ in Germany, http://www.ancestry.it/ in Italy, http://www.ancestry.fr/ in France, http://www.ancestry.se/ in Sweden and http://www.jiapu.cn/ in China. Ancestry members have access to 7 billion names contained in 26,000 historical record collections. Tree-building and photo upload are free on all Ancestry websites. To date, Ancestry.com users have created more than 7 million family trees containing 675 million profiles and 11 million photographs. Nearly 5.4 million unique visitors logged onto Ancestry.com in July 2008 (comScore Media Metrix, Worldwide).

Comments

[Dude]

Hopefully they pay him enough so he can afford a yearly subscription.

[DLA]

After recent changes to the Ancestry site, why am I not surprised to see names like these taking over. Where as the support staff used to be a joy to work with, now you get politically correct double speak. Although they are not happy with me I'm sure after stating that the changes appeared to be of the type when new management comes in just wanting to make their mark instead of changes that would improve research.

[Beryl Blickstein]

Perhaps he will make certin that new products such as FTM actually work before foisting them off on the genealogical public. This means extensive testing for both functionality and speed performance. I hope Ancestry learned its lesson this time.

[Cheryl]

Personally, I want to see a pedigree chart on him. This is one of my family names. Maybe he's a cousin. I'm always looking for more relatives.

[Peggy Sue]

Or maybe he can sort out all the family tree's, where so much coping each other is done and no one has source's.And they want to brag about how many family tree's they have online, since only about 15 to 20% MAY BE RIGHT. And I hope he starts looking for his family tree with ALL 2 OR 3 MILLION names,since they have merged records.He may not have time to do all that!

[Nancy]

Congratuations to Mr. Shoup on his new assignment, I wish him well. I also wish Ancestry.com well. In this tight economy I am sure it will be tough to stay alive. I have come to depend on Ancestry to save me from some of the expensive trips to the library, and also the instant access it provides to information that enables me to continue working on my research projects between trips to the library.

[mary]

No matter what happens at Ancestry, some of your subscribers have to say something condescending about the company.

I, for one am sick of it. No one seems to get a break.

Enough, I say!

[Sharon]

Yes, congratulation to Mr. Shoup! I am also interested in his pedigree chart as the Shoup surname is on my mother's maternal side of the tree.

[Huggin in Texas]

It is interesting to note that Mr.Shoup apparently has no background in genealogy, only in selling things. Hang on.

[Worried]

It is truly frightening that someone with no apparent background or knowledge about genealogy "will be responsible for the product strategy, product definition and design for the global platform of Ancestry.com"

[Worried]

It is truly frightening that someone with no apparent background or knowledge about genealogy "will be responsible for the product strategy, product definition and design for the global platform of Ancestry.com"