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LDS Church Building “Ancestry/MyFamily Killer”
Word on the street has it that the LDS Church is in the process of building a completely free service that will “bury” Ancestry.com and MyFamily.com. I’ve heard the board at MyFamily.com is “freaked” because people inside the LDS Church working on the project have dubbed it the “Ancestry Killer”. I’d be a little nervous too.
According to my source, the LDS Church has put an incredible amount of resources toward the project. Apparently they have brought in top talent from Microsoft and Oracle to build the service.  They have been working on it for sometime and are in the process of testing and transferring data to the new service from existing records. I don’t think this will bode well for any genealogy service charging a subscription fee including the newly minted worldvitalrecords.com. That would make the new service more than just an Ancestry killer. It would make it a category killer and that is one huge online category.
This from a source of mine inside of MyFamily: “It’s definitely a threat. In the end, God is going to win. I’ve already conceded that.”
Wow!
Can anyone else shed light on this issue? Phil, can you weigh in?
Ouch. That’s a lot of local jobs on the line.
Left by Alex McArthur on 10/12/2006Not really, they can all go to work for “The Church”.
Left by ctknud on 10/12/2006If true, what an interesting dilemma for LDS entrepreneurs in the geneology industry…
Left by Blake Snow on 10/12/2006Wow. Does anyone think that “The Church” can pull it off? And won’t people who aren’t LDS be worried about using a religous site to do their geneology?
Left by ogdenguy on 10/12/2006I’ve seen a couple demos of what they’re working on and have met with a few of the people in the family history dept. Honestly, I’m not really certain that it will be an Ancestry killer - maybe not even a worldvitalrecords killer. I say this because in my discussions with them, they discussed being willing to share their data - with certain conditions. I could very well be wrong, but I don’t think Ancestry will be willing to meet those conditions. The other thing is that while they will be offering free access to the church’s data, they will not be including all the proprietary data that Ancestry has behind its walls - or the data that worldvitalrecords is building.
It will definately make the ‘oneworldtree’ useless. But that’s not Ancestry’s bread or butter. I think they’ll have to adapt quite a bit though.
Ancestry’s pricing is ridiculous. I’m an avid Genealogy researcher and I’ve never been willing to pay their prices for their data. I do think that Ancestry will go down soon if they don’t adapt a lot and make some pretty heavy changes. I’m just not sure that the Church’s new Genealogy technology will be the nail in the coffin - but it could be.
It will be interesting to see what happens in the next year with both of them - the Church is monumentally slow and inefficient in getting things out.
Alex makes a good point about a lot of jobs on the line though, the good thing is that the market is HOT for tech people right now - maybe they should jump ship early.
Left by phil801 on 10/12/2006Phil, thanks for the input - great comments!
Left by ctknud on 10/12/2006“And won’t people who aren’t LDS be worried about using a religous site to do their geneology?”
I’m willing to be that the LDS genelogical folks are a much larger audience than the non-LDS genelogical folks. Sure there are statistical outliers and I don’t have any numbers but my hunch is that there is a very strong correlation between the LDS faith and those doing a majority of the genelogical work.
Left by Matthew Reinbold on 10/12/2006There are actually two separate projects the church is working on that could affect Ancestry. The first one is new FamilySearch, which will affect the online family tree programs out there. You can find out more about it in the Google group titled “New FamilySearch.” That’s the one coming out soon. I don’t know that it will be that bad for Ancestry’s “core” business because it just adds a family tree sharing application online. But yes, I’m sure it will affect oneworldtree.
The other one is the scanning project, which will digitize all the holdings in the “vault.” That will be complete anywhere from 3-10 years from now.
But the first images should begin to show up online next year. Obviously this will hurt Ancestry and the other online record providers more, but as Phil mentioned, I’m sure each group has records that aren’t duplicated by the other groups. The question is, how much?
BTW - I wouln’t call the church slow and inefficient, how about careful and methodical?
(ok, I’ll give you the slow.) They just want to get it right. This is an important work we’re involved in, and the learning curve can be steep these days just because there is so much out there, it’s hard to know where to start.
Making something that works, and making something that works simply and intuitively, are two different things - and the latter always takes longer.
Left by Miyuki on 10/12/2006Most of the people who use the Family History Library in Salt Lake City are not members of the church and I suspect the same is true for the people who use the FamilySearch site. Genealogists have not had a problem in the past with using a “religious” site if it helps them with their research. I doubt the family trees at the new FamilySearch will make services like OneWorldTree useless since the sources of the information will be different.
As for the microforms that the FHL is digitzing, I suspect that entrepreneurs will find a way to use that resource to their own advantage by “surrounding the service with a broader range of features” (Tedeschi, Bob. 2006. Genealogy for the Living, the Dead, the Far Away. The New York Times October 9, 2006). There can always be better indexes, better translations, links to related records, etc. I suspect private companies will find ways to capitalize on the changes at FamilySearch and do very well for themselves, indeed.
Left by Steve Danko on 10/13/2006A “T-Hawkins” posted this comment on another post of mine. I thought it might be good to reproduce here as well:
MyFamily.com (aka ancestry.com)
Left by ctknud on 10/13/2006You people are definitely not keeping up with circulating rumors at all… Tim Sullivan (the relatively new CEO) was hired specifically to put an exit strategy into action for their company; not because they have to, but because it is time. Their revenues are up again, they beat their numbers again and as reported in the New York Times last week, they are over $140 million in annual revenue- from $47 mil in 2002! While an IPO seems inevitable, they also seem to be a perfect acquisition target for Google or one of Goog’s competish like MSN, Yahoo or even the newly aggressive, Ask.com.
Think about this - Google paid over a billion and a half bucks for YouTube.com, which is a hugely popular community site BUT has NO REVENUE to speak of. MyFamily.com Ancestry.com on the other hand, is a hugely popular community site that has documented revenues of nearly $150 million dollars!! That is a dream acquisition!! I hope for the IPO so I can buy into this baby but I don’t think they will be able to pass up the acquisition opportunities.
Whichever way they go, ipo or acquisition, I think it is safe to say those rare few with stock (or options) in the company will do very very well. Then Utah will have something new to crow about. Hmm, Google offices in Provo Utah??
“Google offices in Provo Utah?”
WWWHHHhhhhooooooa. I thought BYU was a dry campus.
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Left by Matthew Reinbold on 10/13/2006-
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(Again - there’s a winking emoticon at the end of that)
A few points of clarification:
1. 95% (roughly) of genealogists do not belong to the LDS church. Many of them may have worries about using services provided by the LDS Church. However, a free pricetag is tough to overlook.
2. Ancestry could lose the OneWorldTree and it wouldn’t hurt them that much.
3. If the LDS Church releases free, indexed census images, Ancestry would die almost instantaneously. Indexed census images account for roughly half of Ancestry’s revenue. If a free alternative becomes available, Ancestry will be seriously hurt.
4. The development department for the LDS Church is slow AND inefficient. However, it isn’t infinitely slow and ineffecient. These projects have been under way for many years. It is about time they are released. Ancestry has been living on borrowed time for quite awhile.
The only hope for Ancestry IMO is that they somehow reach an agreement with the LDS Church where Ancestry continues to be the only place where indexed census images are available online (either by threat of some type of lawsuit or potentially some amicable agreement).
Left by Sean on 10/17/2006True: The LDS Church is developing software for collaborating in genealogy research that will likely have significant effects on the genealogical community.
True: the Church has or is also developing software for scanning images, indexing thrugh a volunteer force, and providing records online.
False: people inside have not dubbed the project an “Ancestry Killer” nor is its intent to “bury” Ancestry.
True: Some great talent has joined the effort to build the services. One of the best teams in Utah.
True: the Church has also brought in some talent to work more cooperatively with industry players, like Ancestry, ProQuest, etc.
Left by Fred on 10/20/2006