The Generations Network (TGN) is the parent company of Ancestry.com and several other web sites. The company has now partnered with MyLife.com, an online "people search" service. The announcement is full of highly-positive, "forward looking" statements but I was interested in the words "enhance the people search experience for consumers." It sounds like some new services will soon be available for Ancestry.com subscribers. I do assume that MyLife finds living people, not deceased ancestors.
Perhaps the most telling was the last paragraph that describes some of TGN's "numbers," especially: "Ancestry.com users have created 10 million family trees containing 1 billion profiles and 20 million photographs and stories."
Here is the announcement in full:
MyLife’s Leading People Search Service Attracts Two New Partners
Partnerships with WhitePages and The Generations Network solidifies company’s position as leader in people search and demonstrates market demand for a robust people search solution
LOS ANGELES--MyLife™, the world’s most thorough people search, today announced two new partnerships that extend the reach of MyLife’s superior people search service and enhance the people search experience for consumers. WhitePages and Ancestry.com, part of The Generations Network, Inc. network of sites, are leveraging MyLife’s dynamic people search results to drive business value and extend the reach of their respective brands.
“The increase in market demand for a holistic and meaningful people search experience is palpable as more and more partners look to us to deliver the most comprehensive and accurate people search results on the Web,” said Jeffrey Tinsley, founder and chief executive officer of MyLife. “As the leader in people search, our partnerships allow top Internet companies to add value to their sites and improve the customer experience by providing people search results that offer a unique, 360-degree-view of real people.”
With this partnership, MyLife is taking the Google approach to a broad distribution of results to expand its reach and provide value to consumers who want help finding people. WhitePages and Ancestry.com can now supplement users’ search queries with MyLife’s contextually relevant and three-dimensional people search results.
“We’re constantly striving to improve our customer experience and see significant value in leveraging the reliable people search capabilities that MyLife provides,” said Andrew Wait, senior vice president and general manager of Ancestry.com. “This partnership will help us continue to grow our business and strengthen relationships with our users by providing a breadth and depth of relevant people search results powered by MyLife.”
These partnerships come shortly after the former Reunion.com and Wink services combined to launch MyLife, the most effective and efficient way for people to find and keep track of everyone in their life. MyLife is a profitable online business with over 15 million1 unique monthly visitors and a large user base of more than 50 million members growing at a pace of more than two million new members per month.
About MyLife
With its proprietary people search technology and access to hundreds of millions of profiles from across the web, MyLife.com is the single best source for finding anyone and following updates for both personal and professional contacts, wherever they go. MyLife has more than 62 million members and is growing at a rate of more than 2 million new members per month. The new company was founded by entrepreneur Jeffrey Tinsley, former CEO of GreatDomains.com and Reunion.com. To build on and expand its proven revenue generating model, MyLife has received $25 million in funding from Oak Investment Partners. For more information, please visit http://www.mylife.com.
About WhitePages
WhitePages Inc., a privately held company based in Seattle, WA., is the most trusted and comprehensive source of Connectory™ services for consumers to quickly find each other and connect with confidence. The company's network of sites include WhitePages.com, WhitePages.ca, 411.com, Address.com, PhoneNumber.com and its 1,300 partner sites including AOL.com and MSN.com. The on-the-go user can also access contact information via cell phone, smart phones and other Web-enabled mobile devices such as iPhone, Android and BlackBerry devices.
About Ancestry.com and The Generations Network
The Generations Network, Inc., through its flagship Ancestry.com property, is the world's leading resource for online family history. Ancestry.com has local websites in nine countries and has digitized and put online over 8 billion names and 28,000 historical records collections over the past ten years. Since July 2006, Ancestry.com users have created 10 million family trees containing 1 billion profiles and 20 million photographs and stories. The Generations Network also includes myfamily.com, Genealogy.com, Rootsweb.ancestry.com, MyCanvas.com, dna.ancestry.com, Family Tree Maker and Ancestry Magazine. More than 9.2 million unique visitors spent over 4.7 million hours on a TGN website in March 2009 (comScore Media Metrix, Worldwide).
Dick, you are right those numbers are telling.
"10 million family trees containing 1 billion profiles" is 100 profiles per tree?!
I've just been reading a series of articles on average GEDCOM size by genealogy expert Tamura Jones.
This is a great series. She is not afraid to make mistakes, but takes it step by step and discusses her methodology so you can double-check all her findings :-))
The series provides many numbers for different sites.
Turns out the average size is about 12,500.
The A.com average so much smaller!
I guess that proves Ancestry.com is aimed at beginners?
Peter
Posted by: Peter Valmont | June 23, 2009 at 12:05 PM
This is not a positive development for TGN (Ancestry.com). The two main problems with MyLife.com (formerly Reunion.com) are:
1. They are primarily a for-fee people search engine, aggregating personal information on living individuals from various sources. Sourcing and accuracy as needed by genealogists are not the strong suits of this company.
2. They are among the flagrant contact scraping companies, abusing expectations of users by obtaining your email address book and then emailing (spamming) your friends and family.
See:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/technology/internet/20shortcuts.html?_r=1
Posted by: Infinite Ancestors | June 23, 2009 at 01:03 PM
http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2009/03/ancestrycom-adds-huge-new-content-addition-for-more-recent-years.html
- old news?
It's also funny Ancestry running Intellius Search ads left and right on RootsWeb. Perhaps TGN should show more confidence in MyLife "to deliver the most comprehensive and accurate people search results on the Web" - and should not rely on Intellius?
Posted by: genealogist.info | June 23, 2009 at 01:17 PM
This is starting to feel a little Big Brother-ish to me. What about privacy? Although not as frightening as Facebook, MyLife's privacy policy applies to all their partners and is a lot looser than MyFamily.com.
I was on the the verge of opening a MyFamily.com account and posting my tree in order to work with overseas cousins, but now I'm a little worried. At the moment, I can be reasonably in control of the information posted on MyFamily, but since they are owned by Ancestry, I wonder for how long. Would MyLife's policy trump theirs?
I really want to share with my cousins, but it's getting pretty scary.
Posted by: Penny Holt | June 23, 2009 at 02:12 PM
Will this be free to those of us who subscribe to the most expensive US World on Ancestry?
Posted by: Ann Victoria Paras | June 23, 2009 at 11:33 PM
This really is very worrying. Most of us who have posted a family tree on the web, are meticulous in ensuring that no "live" information is posted. However, perusing many of the trees on the web and in particular at ancestry, others are not so meticulous. I have even found myself a few times (some with erroneous information) and immediately contacted the compiler to get me removed. I am sure most of these people do not realise that their information is "up for grabs" by whoever does a deal with another company.
If things continue like this I can see Family History being dragged into the Data Protection Acts with large fees to be paid for obligatory registration.
Posted by: Sandra J Smith | June 24, 2009 at 07:18 AM
While I value privacy, it is pretty much a thing of the past. If one touts the ideal of no invasion, then we would have to kill the Internet and go back to treking all over the country trying to find elusive records. Maybe that is the preference of some, but not me. I can both get a lot of research done online, AND spend a lot of time with the living members of my family!!
And, I am always very excited to find living relatives, with the possibility that they have personal stories, documents and pictures about their branch of the family! Dead people tell no tales, except via digitized records, and that leaves a lot to be desired in many cases.
While raw research and data are interesting to me, I am not doing my research just for my pleasure. I know that most of my family members would have much more interest in my work (now and after I'm gone) if it includes stories about folks that are living, and those that are not, rather than born, lived, married, died, buried...
Posted by: Red Sanders | June 24, 2009 at 10:38 AM
I'm worried, too. Ancestry.com seems to have taken over or bought most of its competition - including the previously free genealogy community Rootsweb - and now has bought Reunion.com/MyLife, one of the biggest scams on the internet (just Google it)? They suckered me out of 60 do11ars using the email contact trick, and I had a two-month fight with them through PayPal to get my money back - after I received NO services.
You can be sure I will now be keeping some distance from Ancestry.com now as well... unless they can somehow prove that things have changed 180 degrees at Reunion.com/Mylife.
Posted by: Jim Lynch | June 24, 2009 at 01:15 PM
"Previously free" Rootsweb? As of this morning, when I used it, it was still free. I have my reservations about how long that will last, given Ancestry's history of predation, but for now, let's not exaggerate. I'm an Ancestry member, but looked at MyLife once, put in my name, but no family tree, and now get at least 5 or 6 emails a week asking for more info so they can "help me grow my family tree". I was leery before --- now I'm more so.
Linda
Posted by: Zinnchick | June 24, 2009 at 03:34 PM
CAVEAT EMPTOR: You are urged to read the blogs posted on Ancestry.com when MyLife.com was first proposed to Ancestry.com members. There are references to news articles that reveal a lot you should know. If you access MyLife.com, you will most probably pay, and pay, and pay for your mistake with more than just dollars. I have found that they are not a nice group to do business with. Most Ancestry.com bloggers prefer the old "person finder" that was on the site before MyLife.com arrived. It is your decision ultimately, but please make that an informed decision. Regards.
Posted by: MOI | June 24, 2009 at 05:08 PM
Sorry, Ancestry.com has apparently yanked the blogs from March/April timeframe that reported the articles on MyLife.com and the associated problems with that site as experienced by the bloggers.
Posted by: MOI | June 25, 2009 at 12:01 PM
They are still there - you just have to really hunt to find them.
http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2009/03/18/huge-new-content-addition-for-more-recent-years/
Posted by: jking | June 25, 2009 at 08:41 PM