Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

Ancestry.com Reports First Quarter 2013 Financial Results

Ancestry.com released its quarterly financial numbers and reports a subscriber growth of 12% year-over-year. Non-GAAP revenues were $135 million, up 24% year-over-year, and the company had a free cash flow of $51 million. Full details may be found at http://goo.gl/yYQgM.

Ancestry24.za to Close

Ancestry24.za is, or has been, a genealogy web site in South Africa. It seems to have two URLs, using both Ancestry24.za and Ancestry24.com. The site contained many  Anglican Church marriage and baptism records. I have written about the site several times. You can see my past articles by starting at http://goo.gl/1n7z0. Now the owners of Ancestry24.za have announced they are closing the web site.

Quoting from the web site's main page at http://ancestry24.com/closure-of-ancestry24/:

UK Government To Use PayPal For Identity Assurance

I use PayPal's payment system for accepting subscriptions to the Plus Edition of this newsletter. I have been a PayPal customer for 13 years and love the service. (PayPal is a subsidiary of eBay.) Unlike the credit card processor I used previously, PayPal has never lost a payment I made or received. It works 100% of the time and is fully insured against fraud. Now a UK government contract has expressed confidence in PayPal as well. The government has confirmed earlier reports that British citizens will have the option to use PayPal as one of the services available to to accredit themselves for public services such as the new Universal Credit benefit system.

You can read the full story in the TechWeekEurope news at http://goo.gl/lvzj4.

BillionGraves Acquired by Otter Creek Holdings

Corporate mergers and acquisitions continue within the genealogy community. BillionGraves.com has now been acquired by Otter Creek Holdings, a working strategic partner with American Granite and Memorials, Inc. and American Monument (based in Ogden, Utah).

Ancestry.com Shareholders Approve Permira Deal

Ancestry.com announced that its stockholders have approved the company’s $1.6 billion buyout by Permira. Qatalyst Partners LP is acting as financial advisor and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz is acting as legal counsel to Ancestry.com. The deal was first announced in October.

The following is the official announcement, written by Ancestry.com:

FindMyPast Boss Attacks "Detritus of Life" on Facebook

The boss of FindMyPast and several other genealogy web sites has hit out at the “detritus of life” that people pour on to social networks like Facebook, as he pledged to turn his pioneering Friends Reunited website into a “memory box” alternative.

Chris van der Kuyl, chief executive of Brightsolid, the digital arm of media firm DC Thomson, which owns Friends Reunited and findmypast.com and censusrecords.com, said it is spending millions digitizing newspaper archives, birth, marriage and death records, and paperwork from former British colonies such as India, to help turn it into a repository of historical information. "The richness of the stories has blown us away. They are littered with eureka moments," he said.

Ancestry.com Rated as Most Liked New Commercial of 2012

Nielsen’s lists of most-liked ads and product integrations of 2012 were recently announced and Ancestry.com earned the number one rating. Only new ads airing between January 1, 2012 to November 30, 2012 were considered. Top ads were identified by filtering on General Recall, Brand Linkage, & Likeability Linkage (whatever that is).

You can view the entire list at http://goo.gl/mDLp4.

My thanks to newsletter reader Mitch Betts for telling me about the Nielsen ratings.

Geni.com CEO Explains Changes Being Made After Acquisition by MyHeritage

Three days ago I published an article at http://goo.gl/YVEes entitled MyHeritage Acquires Geni.com and Raises $25m in New Funding Round which contained the announcement of the new acquisition. Now Noah Tutak, the CEO of Geni, has sent an email message to all customers that offers many more details about what Geni's customers can expect after the merger. His message states (in part):

Ancestry.com Launches New Web Site Newspapers.com

This should be interesting! Ancestry.com has a major new offering. The following was written by Ancestry.com:

Online Newspaper Web Site Offers a High-Quality Collection of Digitized and Completely Searchable U.S. Newspapers Dating Back Centuries
 
(PROVO, Utah) – November 29, 2012 – Ancestry.com Inc. (Nasdaq: ACOM), the world’s largest online family history resource, today announced the launch of Newspapers.com, a powerful and affordable new web site designed to offer a historically rich collection of more than 800 U.S. newspapers dating from the late 1700s into the early 2000s.
 
Comprising more than 25 million pages, Newspapers.com offers a trove of historical and present-day newspapers ranging from the New York Times to treasured small town and local newspapers throughout the United States.

MyHeritage Acquires Geni.com and Raises $25m in New Funding Round

This is big news for the online genealogy community. The following announcement was written by MyHeritage:

Family history network buys rival and advances international expansion with new funds

LOS ANGELES, California, PROVO, Utah & TEL AVIV, Israel – November 28, 2012 – MyHeritage, the popular online family history network, announced today it has acquired long-time rival Geni.com and closed a new USD$25M funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP), with existing investors Index Ventures and Accel Partners also participating.  Geni.com Founder David Sacks and BVP Partner Adam Fisher are joining the MyHeritage Board of Directors.

The acquisition reinforces MyHeritage’s position as a global power player in the family history industry and accelerates its vision of helping families everywhere build and share their legacy online. The purchase of Geni.com is the eighth and largest acquisition made by MyHeritage since the launch of its online family history network in 2005. It extends MyHeritage’s network to 72 million registered users, 1.5 billion profiles and 27 million family trees, containing the most internationally diverse family history content in the world.

Family Tree DNA Holiday Sale (Nov. 12 through Dec. 31)

Family Tree DNA has announced a year-end sale with significant price reductions. The following is from the company's Facebook page:

As we ended our 8th Annual Genetic Genealogy Conference, several conference participants asked us to start our year-end sale as soon as possible. In answer to those requests we decided to start it immediately.

You can read all the details at http://www.facebook.com/events/368415786586691/.

 

 

Ancestry.com Inc. Reports Q3 2012 Financial Results

—Ancestry.com Subscriber Growth up 19% year-over-year—

— Q3 Total Revenue $128 million, up 24% year-over-year —

PROVO, Utah, Oct. 24, 2012 -- Ancestry.com Inc. (Nasdaq:ACOM), the world's largest online family history resource, reported today financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2012.

"We are very pleased with our third quarter results that featured strong financial performance and subscriber metrics and solid execution on our content and product initiatives," said Tim Sullivan, Chief Executive Officer of Ancestry.com. "We completed the indexing of the 1940 US Federal Census, a key milestone for Ancestry.com and the family history category, and we continued to make progress with our mobile app platform and AncestryDNA rollout."

Ancestry.com To Be Sold to Investor Group Led By Permira For $1.6 Billion

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Ancestry.com Inc. will be acquired by an investor group led by European private-equity firm Permira for nearly $1.6 billion, or $32 per share. Reports added that the $1.6 billion value of the agreement accounts for vesting of outstanding options, with the $32.00 per share price representing a premium of around 40% from where the stock was trading in June.

The Journal reports the buyout is a bet that family-history research is more than a niche market and that the subscriber base can swell with technological innovations, deeper archives and a wider international audience. People familiar with the buyers' plans said that expansion in western Europe is a goal.

You can read more at http://goo.gl/XA5NI.

FOLLOW-UP: The above link points to the Wall Street Journal article. It worked for me and I am not a subscriber. However, some people are reporting that the Journal's web site displays a sign-in form to them. However, you can also go to Google and search there. The story is appearing on hundreds of web sites this morning as the word travels around. You can search by starting here: http://goo.gl/Jyhgb

FOLLOW-UP #2: Here is the press release issued later this morning by Ancestry.com:

FindMyPast.co.uk Permanently Reduces the Price of the 1911 Census

The 1911census.co.uk blog, sponsored by FindMyPast, has announced, "We always try to give you the best possible value for money, so we’ve permanently reduced the price of the 1911 census. From now on, you can view a 1911 census original image for 5 credits (previously 30) and a transcript for 5 credits (previously 10)."

The brief announcement may be found at http://goo.gl/eWfVV.

Ancestry.com Acquires 1000memories

(Article updated at 10:45 AM Eastern time)

1000memories is a company best known for providing a ShoeBox App for Android and iPhone smartphones a mobile photo-scanning app. It is primarily a mobile tool designed for digitizing and sharing photos from the past. ShoeBox first appeared in October 2011. You can read my past articles about 1000memories if you start at http://goo.gl/7p3X7. Now the company has announced that it is being acquired by Ancestry.com.

An article in the 1000memories blog states:

We’re pleased to announce that 1000memories has been acquired by Ancestry.com.