Who Knew the Genealogy Market was This Cut-Throat?

That's the question asked in the  Wall Street Journal European Edition's web site. The Journal has an article about ITV's problems trying to sell Friends Reunited at a £145 million loss and not being able to do so. In the article entitled, "ITV, Mormons and Family Trees," editor Lauren Mills describes the tough competition from other commercial companies and from perhaps the biggest competitor of all: the Mormon church. Competing with a religious organization that gives information away free of charge is perhaps the toughest task of all.

You can find this interesting article at http://blogs.wsj.com/source/2009/11/03/itv-mormons-and-family-trees/.

NOTE: The Wall Street Journal often has articles available for free for a day or two or three, then pulls them back and places them into a closed section available only to subscribers. The article is available to everyone free of charge as I write these words but that probably will change in the near future.

Comments

[Neil McIntosh, WSJ.com Europe]

Hello - thanks for the link. This is just to let you know this article will not become subscriber-only; generally, this decision is made when the story is first published to wsj.com, and the article's state does not change. Readers should be able to click on this link well into the future. Thanks for your interest!

Regards,

Neil McIntosh
Editor, europe.wsj.com

[Dae Powell]

I've spoken with representatives of FamilySearch and they claim they are not competing with anyone. They want the commercial enterprises to succeed and are pleased with the encouragement those businesses offer new family historians. And, I suppose, when you consider how long the LDS Church has engaged in genealogy research, it would seem like the commercial sites are competing with it. I see room for them all, as they offer some overlap and many unique facets, too.

Happy Dae·
http://ShoeStringGenealogy.com

[Ron Ferguson]

I strongly suspect that this proposed merger has been referred to the Competition Commission because of the wide difference in size between Brightsolid and the other British genealogy companies. Personally, I hope that the referral is rejected, as the market is dominated by Ancestry and the merged company will offer a creditable alternative.

Ron Ferguson
http://www.fergys.co.uk