MyHeritage buys FamilyLink and WorldVitalRecords

I DO NOT WORK FOR MyHeritage or FamilyLink or WorldVitalRecords. THERE IS NOTHING I CAN DO TO HELP YOU.

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MyHeritage has bought FamilyLink and WorldVitalRecords. MyHeritage is a social network for sharing family history and family trees, and it does it very well. FamilyLink is an attempt to do something similar that never really worked, in my opinion, and WorldVitalRecords is a source of genealogy-related records, like Ancestry, that also never really made it, at least in Australia.

FamilyLink has/had a Facebook application for creating and sharing trees that I could never manage to get to work properly, which is a shame as I think there is a market for such a thing. I had a subscription to WorldVitalRecords that I haven’t used for a long time, and now that I’ve gone in there again I can see that it looks exactly the same as FamilyLink:

FamilyLink.com

My subscription to WorldVitalRecords was most useful for its Australian content from Archive Digital Books Australasia, which has since moved to FindMyPast.com.au, and so I haven’t been in there for a long time.

It all sounds like a particularly messy family tree, doesn’t it!

I will be watching to see what MyHeritage does with its new purchase.

This is the press release from MyHeritage:

MyHeritage Acquires FamilyLink.com and WorldVitalRecords.com

Significant move into US and addition of historical content mark major evolution for world’s most popular online family network
PROVO, Utah & LONDON, UK & TEL AVIV, Israel-– MyHeritage, the most popular family network on the web, announced today the acquisition of FamilyLink.com, Inc., maker of the family history content sites FamilyLink.com and WorldVitalRecords.com. This is MyHeritage’s seventh and largest acquisition since 2007. The purchase marks a significant move into the US market commercially and operationally, and will boost MyHeritage’s offering to families with the addition of a vast database of more than 3 billion historical records. With offices and staff in Europe, Australia and Israel, MyHeritage will now be adding its first US-based office in Utah, the home of FamilyLink.com and often cited as the family history capital of the world.“We are delighted to join forces with the talented FamilyLink team in Provo to deliver meaningful value to families across the world,” says MyHeritage CEO and Founder Gilad Japhet. “Combining close to one billion family tree profiles on MyHeritage with FamilyLink’s massive library of historical data delivers a perfect one-stop-shop for families looking to discover and share their family history”.Founded in 2006, both FamilyLink.com and WorldVitalRecords.com are subscription services which provide access to a huge database of historical content, covering several billion individuals within census, birth, marriage and death records, as well as the web’s largest archive of historical newspapers. This content will deliver new insights and value to the 60 million people who have signed up on MyHeritage in 38 different languages, creating more than 900 million profiles in 21 million family trees. When brought together under the MyHeritage umbrella, the company’s innovative Smart Matching technology will automatically match any of the new historical data to the relevant users’ ancestors and relatives within the family trees.“Our team of family history veterans couldn’t be more excited about joining forces with MyHeritage”, said FamilyLink.com CEO Paul Brockbank. “This acquisition creates new horizons in exploring family history. People will receive the opportunity to search the most comprehensive historical content sources and make exciting new discoveries; share this information with their close family and save it into their family tree. Combined under the leadership of MyHeritage, the service will continue to flourish and add more value to millions of families”.MyHeritage Founder and CEO Gilad Japhet adds: “The establishment of a US base for MyHeritage in Utah, the international center for genealogical research, is an important milestone in our growth and brings about an exciting opportunity for the company and the families we serve. MyHeritage provides the perfect service to collect the family’s treasured archive to share and keep for future generations in a setting that is friendly and secure – and now we’re excited to top this off with vast amounts of content that will add more color and life to family trees. Through our powerful search engine and automatic Smart Matching technology we’ll find your mother’s yearbook, your great-grandfather’s will and your ancestor’s immigration record, leaving you with the time to marvel at, enjoy and share your family heritage. We’ll do that on a massive, global scale, as we live in a world that is smaller and more tightly connected than ever before”.This is the latest in a series of strategic purchases by MyHeritage since 2007 which have included Pearl Street Software, makers of GenCircles.com and the Family Tree Legends software; free family tree backup service BackupMyTree.com; European family social network market leader OSN (Verwandt) GmbH; Dutch family network ZOOOF; British family network Kindo.com and Polish family network Bliscy.pl.The majority of the FamilyLink.com employees will join MyHeritage, based out of the company’s new US office in Provo, Utah: bringing the benefit of their collective expertise within the family history and North American genealogy market. The CEO of FamilyLink.com, Paul Brockbank, previously CEO of Logoworks and GM of Hewlett Packard Web Print Solutions, will play a key role in supporting the transition over the coming months and will later join the MyHeritage advisory board. FamilyLink.com founder Paul Allen, previously a co-founder of Ancestry.com, and FamilyLink.com’s “We’re Related” Facebook application, will not be part of the merger with MyHeritage.

In the short-term, MyHeritage will continue to operate the two sites FamilyLink.com and WorldVitalRecords.com, with the intention of achieving full integration within MyHeritage in 2012. With immediate effect and for an introductory period, loyal subscribers and users of MyHeritage will be entitled to discounts of up to 50% on FamilyLink.com and WorldVitalRecords.com subscriptions, and vice versa.

About MyHeritage

MyHeritage is the most popular family network on the web. Millions of families around the world enjoy having a private and free place for their families to keep in touch and to showcase their roots. MyHeritage’s Smart Matching™ technology empowers users with an exciting and innovative way to find relatives and explore their family history. With all family information stored in a secure site, MyHeritage is the ideal place to share family photos, and celebrate and preserve special family moments. The company is backed by Accel Partners and Index Ventures, the investors of Facebook and Skype. For more information visit www.myheritage.com.

Comments

  1. A few weeks ago I went into Family link and world vital records on a free 3day trial……….now I find that they have charged me $78.00 for absolutely nothing…not only that, but I can not get in touch because their emails are rejected.

    If you know how or whom I should email please let me know
    Stanley Thompson

  2. jan st lawrence says:

    Free trial – which I had no good information provided. I have had a call from my bank saying that Family Link where charging me $1A and I said that was OK for free trial including free disk. I have now been charged $69.75A and I did not choose what sort of subscription I would choose. I only found this now on my bank statement and still haven’t found this system easy at all to find info so easy as Ancestry.com.au. How can I disown this subscription or at least have a cheat sheet for easy learning of how to access such info. There seems to be only a few lines listed vertically asking very meagre questions. Searching the whole of Ireland and saying no info – I know there were people listed as I have certificates saying they existed. Please explain what I can do to get the best out of your program.

  3. I have found Family Link pretty useless. Sometimes it will tell you that there are records, but you can’t get to them. EG Today the 3 UK marriages for one person I was looking for appeared, but only 1 image to access so that was pretty useless. It might be good for USA records, but poor in comparison with Ancestry for UK and Australian records. Their replies to queries are not very good either. I will not be renewing.

  4. margaret wallace says:

    I paid $12.95 USD to join myh*familylink.com for what I believed to be a short period and if I did not use the site I would be charged no further payment. I used the site three times in less than a week (and could not find what I was looking for) but my credit card has been charged $12.95 each month for the past three months. I wish to unsubscribe but do not know how to go about this. Can anyone please tell me how to do this??

  5. WORLD VITAL RECORDS CANNOT CANCEL DIRECT DEBT OF NO HELP EMAIL ADDRESS NOT VALID TIME DIFFERENCE WHEN YOU RING AMERICA FROM AUSTRALIA NO GO CANNOT EVEN LEAVE A MESSAGE JUST KEEP SUCKING OUT MY BANK ACCOUNT

  6. I have had notice from Familylink of a subscription renewal I didn’t know I had and didn’t ask for. An amount of $94.44 US has been deducted from my account without my approval.
    I have questioned Famillink but can’t get a reply to my email.
    Please explain.
    Yours faithfully

    Sid Jenkins

  7. I had no idea that I had a FAMILYLINK subscription and have now been advised that $94.44 has been deducted for my renewal – without any authorisation from me. I have made several phone calls and sent many emails but have never had any response.
    This is all a big con and I really think something should be done about it.
    Who can I complain to?

  8. I posted this news years ago. I have no links to FamilyLink or MyHeritage or WorldVitalRecords and I have no idea who to contact for complaints.
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