MyHeritage acquires Geni.com
We’re thrilled to announce today that we’ve acquired Geni.com, the Los Angeles-based family tree network. Geni.com is one of the leading family tree websites and it has established a very strong global brand since its inception in 2007. We’re really excited to welcome Geni.com’s talented team to the MyHeritage family.
This is great news all round! As a larger community, the users of MyHeritage and Geni.com can expect to benefit greatly from this acquisition. Users of each website will now receive matches with the family trees of the other website, and MyHeritage’s Smart Matching and Record Matching technologies will benefit the Geni.com users, who will get access to historical records never available before on Geni.com.
This is our eighth and largest acquisition yet. It comes at a time when we’re rapidly growing, adding more records, and offering additional technologies to help you make family history breakthroughs.
The websites of MyHeritage and Geni.com will be kept separate and the users of MyHeritage will not experience any changes in how they use MyHeritage. If you already happen to have an account on MyHeritage and on Geni.com, they will be kept separate.
We thought you may have some questions about this acquisition and hope this post will answer them. For more information, you can read the official press release here.
Continue reading "MyHeritage acquires Geni.com" »
Hidden Memorial: Honoring fallen heroes – Part 2
Recently, we wrote about the discovery of a memorial board - listing the names of 11 WWII servicemen - that had been hidden for 3o years in a communal building's basement.
Laurence Harris, MyHeritage's Head of Genealogy (UK), led a small team to quickly trace the living relatives of these men who were killed in action, to invite the relatives to a ceremony on Remembrance Sunday, in which the board was rededicated and their stories retold.
Over the next few weeks, we'll demonstrate how Laurence was able to do this, while sharing some of the stories of these unsung war heroes.
Continue reading "Hidden Memorial: Honoring fallen heroes – Part 2" »
Holiday: Talking Turkey
“Gobble, gobble” to everyone who celebrates Thanksgiving!
This wonderful family holiday is celebrated by Americans around the world, no matter where they live. It's the time for families to get together and share a delicious feast. The day often includes watching football on TV and planning for “Black Friday” shopping deals!
It is a genuine family holiday and many of us have touching or hilarious stories about Thanksgivings past.
MyHeritage invites you to share your funny stories for the chance to win a one-year PremiumPlus membership. Simply comment on this post or post comments on our Facebook wall or, if you can fit it into 140 characters, tweet them @myheritage. The winning story will be announced on Friday.
Since I can’t participate in the competition as I'm part of the MyHeritage team, here’s my hilarious holiday story.
Continue reading "Holiday: Talking Turkey" »
Cousins Connect: Lithuania to the UK and US
We love bringing member success stories to our readers. They provide encouragement, offer tips, and show what can be accomplished. We especially like the stories of our younger members, which often spotlight social media.
Joe Tarsh of Manchester (UK) is only 21 and became interested in his family when he was 13.
I came to the realization that I wanted to know where I came from and a little voice at the back of my head told me that if I don’t ask now, then all the people who can answer may not be around to answer those questions much longer.
Born in London in 1991, his family moved to Hertfordshire, where he lived until 18. He then took a gap year, returned to the UK in 2010 and is now in his third year at university, studying for a degree in youth and community work.
He joined MyHeritage in March 2010 because he liked the site’s easy accessibility, found it simple to use and it had an incredible amount of data.
Continue reading "Cousins Connect: Lithuania to the UK and US" »
Hidden Memorial: Honoring fallen heroes
Our genealogy team love challenges – so imagine the reaction of Laurence Harris, MyHeritage's Head of Genealogy (UK), when he was shown a 66-year-old Memorial Board commemorating the names of Servicemen who had died in WWII.
The board had been hidden in a rarely-used storage area for more than 30 years.
The challenge was on! Laurence volunteered to trace living family members of the men so that they could be invited to a special service to remember and honor them and to rededicate the Board.
Laurence took this as both a personal and professional challenge. He recognized the importance of learning about these forgotten heroes of the past, enabling the present generation to honor them, and ensuring that their stories are preserved for future generations.
Along the way, he discovered many interesting stories. Over the next few weeks we'll be sharing with you some of these stories and explaining how Laurence managed to trace the descendants.
Do you have stories to share about unsung war heroes in your family? Let us know in the comments below, and email relevant photos to stories@myheritage.com
Get ready for 2013: MyHeritage family calendars
2013 is just around the corner so it's time to start thinking about organizing the year ahead. With so many family birthdays, anniversaries, events, holidays and personal activities to keep track of, anyone can appreciate a handy family calendar for the New Year, prepared in a few clicks!
Our beautiful calendars are really simple to make, because you've already done the hard part - entering the family birthdays, anniversaries and other events and adding photos to your MyHeritage family tree. All this will be automatically placed in the family calendar along with relatives' photos related to each event.
A collage of family photos will appear on the cover page for each month - but not just any photos! The calendar automatically selects photos of people who have a special event during that month. You can also customize the calendar, add or edit events, remove or replace photos, add national holidays and religious holidays and much more.
The calendars are the result of our partnership with specialist companies Fuga Technologies and Total Graphics. The calendars are extremely affordable, costing less than $20 each. They make a great gift for your family for the upcoming holidays and if you order multiple copies you will not pay more for shipping, which is very affordable at approx. $2 only. Express shipping is available for those who need their calendars in a rush.
Continue reading "Get ready for 2013: MyHeritage family calendars" »
Halloween Competition: And the winner is…
Thanks to all of you who entered the MyHeritage Halloween Family Photo competition.
We received some great photos but, alas, only one can win the one-year data subscription. After our panel of judges reviewed each photo, we're delighted to announce that Debby Carter has won our prize!
Here's the winning photo:
Continue reading "Halloween Competition: And the winner is…" »
Webinar: Genealogy 101
We're delighted to invite you to register now for our webinar: "Genealogy 101: Everything you need to know about researching your family history" which will be presented on Tuesday, November 13 at 2pm EST/7pm UK.
Join US genealogy adviser Schelly Talalay Dardashti for a Family History master class. This session, open to beginners and more advanced researchers alike, will cover everything from getting started in family history research to breaking down brick walls.
There will be a live Q&A session as well as a chat room to ask questions or comment during the webinar, so think about those things that challenge you and come prepared to challenge Schelly!
View recordings of past webinars on our webinar website.
We look forward to welcoming you online.
Poll: Ever forget a close relative’s birthday?
We all have many things on our plates and sometimes important dates and events just get lost in the commotion.
It's not that we're unaware of the birthday date, it's just that often we don't know what today's date is...
Forgetting a birthday is, in some families, a cardinal sin. That's why lots of people enjoy MyHeritage's birthday reminders via email as well as site notifications.
Has it ever happened to you? If so, how did you rectify it? Let us know in the poll and comments section below.
Grandmothers: Their place in history
Our grandmothers! What do we remember best about them?
It may be special treats found in their refrigerator each time we visited. Making macaroni necklaces. Teaching us to crochet. Allowing us to do what our parents never did. The always-available baby-sitting provided. The list can go on forever about the nurturing of our grandmothers and the importance of that in our individual development, as well as their place in our families.
Even more interesting is a new study based on computer simulations that supports the "grandmother hypothesis:" That we couldn't have done it without them!
The theory is that humans evolved longer adult lives than apes because grandmothers helped feed their grandchildren over some 24,000 to 60,000 years of development.
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