For those of you who may be interested in this topic:
Ancestry.com and Rootsweb has announced yesterday a merger of these two
companies.
Many persons seem to be concerned about this, but I think in all fairness we
should wait and see what, if any changes will occur.
I have been assured that the Rootsweb lists and associated items on the
internet will remain free access and as they have always been.
MyFamily.com is a subsidiary of
Ancestry.com and many of you use this or
have used it. There has been alot of talk on alot of mailing lists regarding
this.
If you choose to discuss it, then please do it among yourselves and not on
the list. Both companies are promising no changes in the mailing lists so
lets not let it take over our list, leave this for research.
I am posting this only as a way of keeping you informed, many of you should
not even notice a difference. Below is in part what has been sent to the
listowners. The is a link at the bottom for any further information.
Thanks
Debbie Jennings
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21 June 2000
SPECIAL EDITION
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MyFamily.com and
RootsWeb.com Join Forces:
Alliance Allows Free Genealogy to Continue on the Web
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MYFAMILY.COM AND
ROOTSWEB.COM JOIN FORCES
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MyFamily.com, Inc., the leading online family network, announced today that
it
has entered into an agreement to acquire
RootsWeb.com, the oldest and
largest
free community genealogy site.
RootsWeb.com will continue to be free to all
users and will maintain its own unique URL at
http://www.rootsweb.com.
"This is truly a winning combination for both organizations and for the
millions
of users who make up our audiences," said Greg Ballard, CEO of
MyFamily.com,
Inc.
The union will provide
RootsWeb.com with the financial backing to expand and
the
business structure needed to focus on preserving, sharing, and exchanging
family
history records. As part of the
MyFamily.com network of sites, the
RootsWeb.com
site will be able continue its tradition of free access to information with
additional technology tools, increased family research content, and a
greater
range of genealogical resources.
"RootsWeb.com fits well with the
MyFamily.com vision of creating the largest
and
most active online resource for families and family history research," said
Dr.
Brian Leverich, founder of
RootsWeb.com. "This agreement will expand the
number
of
RootsWeb.com users and content contributors. At the same time, we have
ensured that
RootsWeb.com content, services, mailing lists, and Web pages
will
remain free, while allowing the site to provide more functionality and
resources
to a larger audience as a result of our being part of the
MyFamily.com
network."
Ancestry.com, part of the
MyFamily.com network, has a seventeen-year history
of
publishing award-winning books, magazines, and CDs, and currently offers
more
than 600 million records and over 2,500 databases. More than half of the
data is
freely accessible to all Web users.
Ancestry.com also hosts, free of charge,
the
Ancestry World Tree and Online Family Tree software, which allow users to
connect and collaborate with other researchers who are working on the same
lines.
Ancestry.com users retain ownership of their data, and the company
pledges never to charge for access to that data or to publish it. For those
who
prefer to keep their information a little closer to home, sister site
MyFamily.com allows users to create free, private sites that can be used to
post
family history data, share news and photos with family, chat online, and
much
more.
RootsWeb.com is a valuable resource for family historians, with interactive
guides, discussion lists, and numerous tools for tracing one's ancestry; it
hosts more than 17,000 independently authored Web sites and about 19,000
mailing
lists. All of these services will remain free to users.
As part of its ongoing commitment to the genealogical community,
MyFamily.com,
Inc. will also continue to support RootsWeb.com-affiliated volunteer,
non-profit
organizations, such as The USGenWeb Project, Immigrant Ship Transcribers
Guild,
The Free Births, Marriages, and Deaths Projects, and other groups that
provide
free genealogical content.
The
MyFamily.com acquisition of
RootsWeb.com promises to make it easier than
ever for family historians everywhere to discover their heritage.
For the full press release, see
http://www.ancestry.com/home/celebrate/rootsrelease.htm.
MYFAMILY.COM, INC. URLs: