Genealogy: 3 ways to involve family during the holidays
As we approach the holiday season, the chances are that many of us will spend time with our families.
Whether you'll be visiting close relatives or meeting with distant cousins, family get-togethers are the perfect way to find out more about your family history.
Want to add more information to your family tree or inspire the younger generations to get involved? Here are three simple tips to turn your next family gathering into a genealogy opportunity!
1. Ask relatives to bring an old family object
Documenting the story of a family treasure can be an great tool to increase understanding about your family history. Whether a letter, card, ornament, jewelry or recipe, encourage relatives to bring something to show everyone. These items can bring interesting stories to life and provide new family information. Continue reading "Genealogy: 3 ways to involve family during the holidays" »
Photos: Do ancestors resemble living relatives?
Ever heard someone say "he looks just like his father"? What about,"he looks just like his great-great-great-grandfather"?
I recently found an old family photo of one of my ancestors and noticed a striking similarity with a living relative.
When looking at old ancestral photos, I've always had a sense of familiarity. I notice a certain family resemblance to living relatives, such as their physical features or just their facial expressions.
Photographer Ulric Collette's "genetic portraits" takes this concept to a new level. Ulric merges photos of relatives and shows how alike some family members look.
MyHeritage's look-alike meter helps people answer that age-old question as to whether they look more like their mother or father.
Have you found an old family photo and noticed a resemblance between those in the photo and your living relatives?
Let us know in the comments below.
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" »
MyHeritage raises $25 million of new funding
We’re proud to announce today that we have closed a new round of financing and raised $25 million to boost MyHeritage’s operations in the years ahead and allow MyHeritage to continue to grow and provide better services to our users. The funding round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP), with existing investors Index Ventures, Accel Partners and Hasso Plattner Ventures also participating.
BVP is a global venture capital firm with offices in Silicon Valley, Cambridge, Mass., New York, India and Israel. BVP delivers the broadest platform in venture capital spanning across industries, geographies, generations and stages of company growth. From LinkedIn to Pinterest, Staples to Skype, VeriSign to Yelp, BVP has helped incubate and support companies that have anchored tidal shifts in the economy. More than 100 BVP-funded companies have gone public on exchanges in North America, Europe, and Asia.
Continue reading "MyHeritage raises $25 million of new funding" »
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" »
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.
Competition: Submit Halloween Family Photos for a chance to win
Following last year's fun, we're really excited to be re-running our Halloween Family Photo competition!
Send your most creative and original Halloween family photos and we'll choose three winners to receive a one-year MyHeritage annual data subscription, providing full access to all family history records in our database.
As Halloween approaches and you've started to think about costumes, don't forget to take a photo, or send us an old photo from a Halloween past!
The rules are simple: Upload your photo* to our Facebook Page or Tweet to @MyHeritage using the hashtag #myheritagehalloween. Don't have a Facebook or Twitter account? Email your photo to marketing@myheritage.com.
We'll be looking for the most ghoulish, wacky and creative photos. Remember, we’re all about family here at MyHeritage, so we'd like to see your whole family getting involved. Check out these photos from last year.
Entries close at noon (in your country of submission) on Friday, November 2, 2012, so you’d better get snapping now, if you’d like to get your hands on a one-year MyHeritage annual data subscription!
Don’t get too spooked.
The MyHeritage Team.
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*We kindly request that all photos be of a reasonable resolution (96dpi at least) and that the submission is your own original work (and not infringing any copyright laws). Any images of under-18s must be cleared for usage with their parent(s) or guardian(s). Three winners will be chosen from all entries received, and will each receive a free MyHeritage annual data subscription for 12 months. Winners will be notified using their original mode of entry and we will make every practical or best-faith effort to contact them. See the full terms and conditions here.
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