Ancestry.com Inc.
 |
|
Type |
Private |
| Industry |
online services,
genealogy,
online publishing,
software publishing |
| Founded |
1983 |
| Headquarters |
Provo, Utah, United States |
| Key people |
Tim Sullivan, President and CEO[1] |
| Products |
Ancestry.com, Genealogy.com, MyFamily.com,
Rootsweb.com, Fold3.com, "Family
Tree Maker" genealogy software |
| Revenue |
US$399.7 million (2011) |
| Owner(s) |
Spectrum Equity Investors |
| Employees |
~Over 1000 worldwide (2012) |
| Website |
International:
corporate.ancestry.com
Europe:
ancestryeurope.lu |
Ancestry.com Inc., formerly The Generations Network, is
a
privately held
Internet company based in
Provo, Utah, USA. The largest
for-profit
genealogy company in the world,[2]
it operates a network of genealogical and historical record websites
focused on the U.S. and nine foreign countries, develops and markets
genealogical software, and offers a wide array of genealogical related
services. As of September 2012, the company provided access to
approximately 11 billion records, 40 million family trees, and 2 million
paying subscribers.[3]
In addition to its flagship site, Ancestry.com operates Archives.com,
Fold3.com, ProGenealogists,1000memories.com, Newspapers.com,
Genealogy.com, MyFamily.com, and Rootsweb.com.[4]
Family Tree Maker software, developed and marketed by the company,
is the largest selling genealogical software in the world.[citation
needed]
Under its subsidiaries, Ancestry.com operates foreign sites that
provide access to services and records specific to other countries in
the languages of those countries. These include several countries in
Europe (covered by Ancestry.com Europe S.à r.l.[5])
as well as Australia, Canada, and China.
History
Infobases, Inc.
Ancestry.com headquarters in
Provo
In 1990, Paul B. Allen (not to be confused with Microsoft cofounder
Paul G. Allen) and Dan Taggart, two
Brigham Young University graduates, founded Infobases and
began offering
Latter-day Saints (LDS) publications on
floppy disks. Allen's brother Curt and his brother-in-law
Brad
Pelo had founded
Folio Corporation, where Paul Allen had worked in 1988. Infobases
chose to use the Folio infobase technology which Allen was familiar with
as the basis for their products.
The first products were floppy disks and compact disks sold from the
back seat of their car. In 1994 Infobases was named among
Inc. magazine's 500 fastest-growing companies.[6]
Their first offering on CD was the LDS Collectors Edition, released in
April 1995, selling for $299.95,[7]
which was offered in an on-line version in August 1995.[8]
Ancestry.com
On January 1, 1997, Infobases' parent company,
Western Standard Publishing, purchased Ancestry, Inc.,[9]
publisher of
Ancestry magazine and genealogy books. Founded in 1983 by John
Sittner as a genealogy newsletter, Ancestry magazine had been
launched in January 1994. Western Standard Publishing's CEO was
Joe Cannon, one of the principal owners of
Geneva Steel.[10]
In July 1997, Allen and Taggart purchased Western Standard's interest
in Ancestry, Inc. At the time, Brad Pelo was president and CEO of
Infobases, and president of Western Standard. Less than six months
earlier, he had been president of Folio Corporation, whose digital
technology Infobases was using. In March 1997, Folio was sold to
Open Market for $45 million.[11]
The first public evidence of the change in ownership of Ancestry
Magazine came with the July/August 1997 issue, which showed a newly
reorganized Ancestry, Inc., as its publisher. That issue's masthead also
included the first use of the Ancestry.com web address.
More growth for Infobases occurred in July 1997 when Ancestry, Inc.,
purchased
Bookcraft, Inc., a publisher of books written by leaders and
officers of
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).[12][13]
Infobases had published many of Bookcraft's books as part of its LDS
Collector's Library. Pelo also announced that Ancestry's product line
would be greatly expanded in both CDs and online.
Alan Ashton, a longtime investor in Infobases, and founder of
WordPerfect, was its chairman of the board. Allen and Taggart began
running Ancestry, Inc. independently from Infobases in July 1997, and
began creating one of the largest online subscription-based genealogy
database services.[14]
In April 1999, to better focus on its Ancestry.com and MyFamily.com
Internet businesses, Infobases sold the Bookcraft brand name and its
catalog of print books to its major competitor in the LDS book market,
Deseret Book. Included in the sale were the rights to Infobases's
LDS Collector's Library on CD. A year earlier, Deseret Book had released
a competing product called GospeLink, and the two products were combined
as a single product by Deseret Book.[15][16]
The MyFamily.com website launched in December 1998, with additional
free sites beginning in March 1999.[17]
The site generated one million registered users within its first 140
days.[14]
The company raised more than US$90 million in venture capital from
investors[14]
and changed its name on November 17, 1999, from Ancestry.com, Inc., to
MyFamily.com, Inc. Its three Internet genealogy sites were then called
Ancestry.com, MyFamily.com, and FamilyHistory.com.[18]
Sales for 2002 were about US$62 million, and those for 2003 were
US$99 million.[19]
In March 2004, the company opened a new
call center in Provo as a result of outgrowing their old call center
in
Orem. The new call center accommodates about 700 agents at a time.[20]
Heritage Makers was acquired by MyFamily.com in September 2005,[21]
and sold a year later in August 2006.[citation
needed] The Ancestry.ca website was opened on
January 24, 2006.[22]
In March 2006, MyFamily opened a new office in
Bellevue, Washington, as part of the MyFamily business unit.[23]
Encounter Technologies was acquired in April 2006.[24]
The Generations Network logo (2007–2009)
On December 19, 2006, the company changed its name to "The
Generations Network."[25]
While the company had been offering free access to Ancestry.com at LDS
Family History Centers, that service was terminated on March 17,
2007, because of the inability to reach a mutually agreeable licensing
agreement between TGN and the LDS Church. In 2010 Ancestry restored
access to its site at Family History Centers.
On July 6, 2009, the company changed its name to "Ancestry.com".[26]
In 2010, Ancestry sold its book publishing assets to
Turner Publishing.[27]
In the same year, the company discontinued the publication of
Ancestry Magazine, after 25 years of publication[28]
and Genealogical Computing.[29]
Ancestry.com became a publicly traded company on NASDAQ (symbol:
ACOM) on November 5, 2009, with an initial public offering of 7.4
million shares priced at $13.50 per share underwritten by Morgan
Stanley, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Jefferies & Company, Piper
Jaffray, and BMO Capital Markets.[30][31]
The company continued its partnership with
NBC for the
second season of the
Who Do You Think You Are? television series in 2011.[32]
Ancestry.com expanded its location to San Francisco, CA, in 2010,
starting its office in San Francisco with brand new engineering,
product, and marketing teams. The San Francisco office is geared toward
developing some of Ancestry's cutting-edge technology and services. Some
of their recent initiatives include iPhone and iPad application
development.
In December 2011, Ancestry.com moved the
Social Security Death Index search behind a
paywall
and stopped displaying the Social Security information of people who had
died within the past 10 years because of
identity theft concerns.[33]
In June 2012, rumors that Ancestry was working with
Qatalyst Partners to put itself up for sale began to circulate.[34]
In October 2012, Ancestry.com purchased a photo digitization and
sharing service called
1000Memories.[35]
In October 2012, Ancestry.com agreed to be acquired by a private
equity group consisting of Permira Advisers LLP, members of
Ancestry.com's management team, including CEO Tim Sullivan and CFO
Howard Hochhauser, and Spectrum Equity for $32 per share or around $1.6
billion.[36]
Products and
services
Ancestry.com is a
subscription-based genealogy research website with over 5 billion
records online.[37]
The majority of records are from the United States, though records are
being added for other countries, such as Canada, the UK, and European
countries. Some records are free for anyone to access, but the majority
are accessible only by paid subscription.
On June 22, 2006, Ancestry.com completed the
indexing and
scanning of all of the
United States Federal Census
records
from 1790 through 1930.[38][39]
Ancestry.com was nominated for a 2007
CODiE Award in the "Best Online Consumer Information Service"
category.[40]
For
genetic genealogy, Ancestry.com offers
genealogical DNA tests of
autosomal DNA, paternal
Y-chromosome DNA and maternal
mitochondrial DNA.[41]
Site users and
traffic
In the first quarter of 2012, Ancestry had 1.87 million users.[42]
According to Quantcast, as of April 2012, Ancestry.com reached a rough
estimate of 8.3 – 8.4 million people in the US.[43]
Other sites
MyFamily.com allows members to create private family or group
websites. Customization is limited. The 1998 version is still available,
but no further enhancements are planned.[citation
needed] After three years of a beta release 2.0, it
is currently running the first non-beta release, "MyFamily.com 2.5.3".
However, since the architecture was changed so radically from 2.0 to
2.5, internally at MyFamily all references to v2.5 are actually being
called v3.0.[44]
Users of version 3.0 (aka 2.5) last saw an update to the code in
February 2010, so since that date both v1.0 and v3.0 have been 'frozen'.[45]
Migration services from v1.0 to v3.0 were stopped March 21, 2010, with
no reason given.[46]
Many features of the original version of the site have not yet been
ported to this release, although new features such as video support,
blog support, social group interface, and unlimited storage have been
introduced.[47]
Also, in May 2010, MyFamily closed their Bellevue, Washington,
development office, effectively letting their entire staff go since the
offer to move to Provo, Utah, was not taken up by any staff. Since the
loss of the Washington office, no new features have been added nor have
any current problems/bugs been resolved. As of July 2010, free sites on
v3.0 were discontinued.[45]
RootsWeb was acquired by MyFamily.com in June 2000.[48]
RootsWeb is a free genealogy community that uses online forums, mailing
lists, and other resources to help people research their family history.
Founded in 1993 by Brian Leverich and Karen Isaacson as the Roots
Surname List, it is the oldest free online community genealogy research
site.[49]
Users can upload
GEDCOM
files of their information for others to search at the WorldConnect
portion of the site. Trees uploaded to WorldConnect are searchable at
both the RootsWeb and Ancestry websites.
Genealogy.com is a genealogy research website with some
records not found on Ancestry.com, though the total number of records
available is smaller. Genealogy.com was acquired from
A&E Networks by MyFamily.com in 2003.[50]
LongLostPeople.com allows one to search
public records for living people in the United States.[51]
Footnote.com, acquired in Fall 2010, has a large collection of
documents dealing with the United States, including military records,
city directories, and newspapers.[52]
Footnote has been rebranded as fold3.
ProGenealogists.com is the official Ancestry.com research
firm.
Family Tree Maker
Family Tree Maker (FTM) is advertised as "the #1 selling genealogy
software".[56]
As with other
genealogy software, FTM allows the researcher to keep track of
information collected during research and to create reports, charts, and
books containing that information. The software was originally developed
by Kenneth Hess of Banner Blue Software,[53]
which was purchased by
Brøderbund in 1995.[57]
It passed through the hands of
The Learning Company,
Mattel,
and others before coming under its current ownership.
A redesigned Family Tree Maker 2008 was released August 14, 2007.[58]
The 2009 version of the program corrected some of the errors and
omissions of its predecessor, and introduced a few new features.[citation
needed] Family Tree Maker 2010 claims to further
enhance the radical re-design and be more powerful and feature-packed
with faster navigation and quicker load times.[59]
A version for the Mac was released in 1997, but due to low market
demand was discontinued[60]
for over a decade. A new version of Family Tree Maker for Mac was
finally released November 4, 2010.[61]
Family Tree Maker Version 16 was awarded a
CODiE Award in the "Best Consumer Productivity Solution" category in
2006.[62]
FTM version
history
Please press show for more information on past versions.
Family Tree Maker version history
Past products
Past genealogy programs.