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For Family History Month: Ancestry.Com Gives Families a Way to Create a Lasting Family Legacy Online

Posted on: Tuesday, 17 October 2006, 09:00 CDT

PROVO, Utah, Oct. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- To mark Family History Month, Ancestry.com, the world's largest family history website, today announced that the newly redesigned Ancestry.com website has experienced a dramatic increase in user-generated content. By allowing users to upload and share rich personal family artifacts such as photos, journal entries, historical records and more, the company has reported the addition of 49.7 million names on 278,000 family trees, 119,500 photos and almost 3 million family history documents attached since the official launch of the revamped site in late July.

Users are leveraging an array of recently introduced easy-to-use search, save and share tools to utilize Ancestry.com's extensive database of more than 5 billion searchable names, including the digitized and indexed U.S. Federal Census collection from 1790 to 1930. The enhancements are also enabling users to build, organize and share their family stories through a variety of interwoven features such as Person Pages that provide a detailed snapshot of a family member's life events, fully-indexed Member Trees, and OneWorldTree(SM), the world's largest family tree, which includes data from a collection of more than 500,000 user-submitted trees.

"In just a few weeks, we've seen an amazing burst in the amount of content Ancestry.com customers are uploading and sharing with one another," said Tim Sullivan, CEO, MyFamily.com, Inc., parent company of Ancestry.com. "We specifically engineered the site to encourage customers to build their family trees online and enhance them with shoebox memories, photos, exclusive family documents and personal histories."

With more than 23,000 databases, Ancestry.com hosts the world's largest collection of family history records and continually expands its offerings by acquiring more content from both direct acquisitions and user-submissions. Most recently, Ancestry.com added more than 52,000 postcards to its historical postcard collection as well as birth, marriage and death notices and announcements from eight major U.S. newspapers featuring more than 30 million names from 1851 to 2003. Currently, improvements to the site are fueling an influx of user-generated data. The simple combination of more efficient searching, better results and a more collaborative, social-networking environment is creating an enhanced family history experience for all users.

"We couldn't be more pleased and pleasantly surprised that these priceless pieces of history, which would otherwise be impossible to find, are flooding the site by the thousands each day," said Mr. Sullivan. "We are just beginning to see the full effects of these new features and are very excited by this incredible response. We're excited that we're transforming Ancestry.com from a purely research focused site to a place where families can create a lasting family legacy online."

Ancestry.com Membership Packages: Annual membership: $19.95 for the Family Trees & Connections $155.40 for the U.S. Deluxe collection (equivalent to $12.95 per month) $347.40 for the World Deluxe collection (equivalent to $28.95 per month) Monthly membership: $29.95 for the U.S. Deluxe collection $39.95 for the World Deluxe collection Free Services:

Ancestry.com offers free services which allow users to access to various portions of the website. Users can create a family tree online, upload family photos, create life timelines and share trees with family members. In addition, users who are invited to view a family tree have full access to the family history records and photos attached to names listed on the tree. Users also have access to message boards, can browse the Ancestry Learning Center and Library and can sign up for free weekly and monthly newsletters published by Ancestry.com.

About Ancestry.com

With 725,000 paid subscribers, Ancestry.com is the largest online family history site and the premier resource for Americans interested in learning about their family history. Since 1997, Ancestry.com has been helping people connect to their roots, delivering a wealth of genealogical data to customers. Ancestry.com is the No. 1 online source for family history information, including the web's largest collection of historical records. Ancestry.com is part of a global network of sites under MyFamily.com, Inc., that includes Ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.ca, Ancestry.com.au, Rootsweb.com, Genealogy.com, and MyFamily.com. For more information, visit http://www.ancestry.com/.

Ancestry.com

CONTACT: Julia Burgon, ext. 124, julia_burgon@coltrin.com; or Tola St.Matthew-Daniel, ext. 101, Tola_stmatthew-daniel@coltrin.com, both of Coltrin &Associates, +1-212-221-1616, for Ancestry.com

Web site: http://www.ancestry.com/

Source: PRNewswire

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