Barbara Poole sent me a link to an article discussing recent changes at Ancestry.com (a division of MyFamily.com) . I notice that online dating comes up a lot in recent articles about Ancestry.com, but that’s not surprising since Tim Sullivan, the (relatively) new chief executive at MyFamily.com is a refugee from the online dating industry.
“Ancestry.com is accustomed to competing with public institutions that give away genealogy information for which it charges. LibertyEllisFoundation.org gives away data about immigrant ship manifests to help raise awareness about Ellis Island, while FamilySearch.org, which is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, gives away census data at least partly to help its members who would like to baptize ancestors into the church.
Mr. Sullivan of Ancestry.com said the company would offer DNA searching in the near future, and would compete with the Sorenson database as it does with the other free sites — by surrounding its own version of the service with a broader range of features.” …read more
Source: Tedeschi, Bob. 2006. Genealogy for the Living, the Dead, the Far Away. The New York Times October 9, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/technology/09ecom.html (accessed October 9, 2006).
