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<DIV><FONT size=2>And here is another update.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Another Side of the Ancestry.com Removal From the Family
History Centers<BR>> EMail This Post < | by Leland Meitzler | permalink |
3/17/2007 | <BR>Yesterday I posted the announcement about the removal of “free”
Ancestry.com from the Family History Centers. I’ve now received a copy of
communication written by The Generations Network CEO Tim Sullivan, to Ancestry
employees. Keep in mind that there are two sides to every issue - so I think
it’s fair to make this post.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Although I personally don’t profit in the slightest from the
success of Ancestry.com, I am big supporter of what they do for the genealogical
community. I believe that although their product isn’t inexpensive, it’s a
tremendous value for any genealogist. Their continual addition of new digital
data (case in point - The Iowa State Censuses!) - as well as indexes makes a
real difference to genealogists. That said, you can see that I’m probably a tiny
bit prejudice. I know that sometimes coming to agreements that work for all
parties is hard - if not impossible.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Mr. Sullivan’s letter follows:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>From: Tim Sullivan<BR>Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 4:38
PM<BR>To: FYI ALL<BR>Subject: Update</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>As promised, it’s been an incredibly busy first two months of
2007, so I thought it would be a good time to take a quick pause and take note
of an amazing list of stuff that we’ve gotten done so far this year. This list
is by no means complete, but it’s a representative sample of traction on
multiple fronts:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Ancestry.co.uk successfully launched their WWI collection with
an event at the Churchill Museum. The release of this content collection
received fantastic national media coverage and drove material incremental
traffic and new members.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Together with the New York Daily News, we broke the “Al
Sharpton / Strom Thurmond” story on Feb. 25th, generating unprecedented media
attention in the U.S. with:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>587 AP stories across the nation - in print, online,
broadcast, and radio <BR>87 Top-tier / regional stories in such publications as
the New York Times, the Washington Post, TIME Magazine, and Yahoo.com <BR>1,261
broadcast stories reaching more than 100 million people, including MSNBC, NBC
Nightly News, the Tonight Show, Inside Edition, and Good Morning America (and
even The Daily Show and Colbert Report last night) <BR>1,800 blog postings
<BR>All of the press generated a huge spike in traffic on Ancestry. On Feb.
27th, Ancestry experienced a record-breaking day for both page views (20.7
million) and member trees created in one day (46,003). <BR>myfamily.com 2.0 has
soft launched and is now promoted on the home page of <A
href="http://www.myfamily.com">www.myfamily.com</A> and through advertising on
Ancestry.com and Rootsweb.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Business in Canada is ramping nicely and exceeding budget. Our
Heritage Day promotion there was a tremendous success.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>The launch of our enhanced hint / search engine capability
represents a huge step forward for our core technology. With the launch of this
improved technology, the number of tree hints accepted nearly doubled over
night.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Our self-publishing platform for Ancestry.com has been
released in alpha mode, and we continue to be excited about the idea of giving
Ancestry.com users the ability to publish and share their family
history.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Family Tree Maker started limited beta testing March 2 and is
barreling towards a major summer release</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>And, finally, we welcome the Member Services team into the
Riverwoods building. It is fantastic to have our customers that much closer to
us….</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>This is a great start to the year. Congrats to
all.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>I also wanted to share a few thoughts with all of you on
another topic. For the last seven years, our company has provided free access to
Ancestry.com inside the family history centers of the LDS Church. During this
time, we’ve done this without any formal agreement or compensation. Several
months ago, we informed the Church of our desire to craft a formal relationship
that would allow us to continue providing this free access. This is similar to
the way that we license Ancestry.com to over 1400 public libraries in the U.S.
and U.K. We do this for a license fee which lets patrons of these institutions
use our service for free inside their facilities. As you can imagine, this is a
very popular program among libraries.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Unfortunately, we were not able to come to agreement with the
Church on the terms of this proposed relationship. We are disappointed by this,
as we know that patrons of family history centers value Ancestry.com, and we
think our institutional licensing program is priced very fairly. We remain
willing and eager to have Ancestry.com available in family history centers, and
we are even hopeful that at some point the Church will reconsider their position
and decide to give patrons of their family history centers access to the world’s
greatest online resource for family history research.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>We will continue to provide access in family history centers
to a small number of databases which are covered by other agreements, and none
of our other many agreements with the Church are impacted by this change. We
continue to have a number of mutually beneficial agreements and relationships
with the Church, and as two large players in the family history space, we share
a common goal of getting as many people as we can interested in their family
history. Our relationship is a good one, and we are always looking for ways to
cooperate with the Church in order to grow our business and ignite more interest
in the category. I’m sharing all of this with all of you because I am sure that
there will be some unhappy patrons of family history centers, and I wanted
everyone to understand that this was not a one-way decision on our
part.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Finally, I am constantly asked whether we think of the Church
as a competitor. The answer to this really depends on the underlying assumptions
of the question. Are we competing for dollars? No. Do we have exactly the same
goals? No. Are we unfriendly? Absolutely not. Is TGN committed to making sure
that Ancestry.com remains the #1 resource for online family history? Absolutely.
Is Ancestry going to continue to be the home of the world’s largest online
family tree? Yup. Should we be able to innovate faster than anyone on the planet
in this space? Of course. Are we two large players that each have done
tremendous things to help people understand their family history? Yes. Can we
continue to cooperate with the Church to get millions more people interested in
family history? We can, and we will.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>I think we have a pretty good game plan for continuing to grow
a truly great company.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Thanks,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Tim</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">.or.us
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