Tuesday, July 7, 2009

It’s Not Stonehenge Nor The Generations Network

You’ll recall last week I posted this picture and asked where you thought it might be:

The Ancestry Insider at Stonehenge on the summer solstice

You may even recall the hint:

This magnificent circle of stones is located next to a highway.

Looking for a genealogical-world tie-in?

The highway leads to a genealogical company rumored to be changing its name…

…again.

The actual location of this stone edifice is the Stonehenge Retirement Center of Orem (motto: we provide health care from the Bronze Age), located on Orem Center Street, the highway that connects Interstate 15 with The Generations Network headquarters in Provo, Utah.

As Predicted

As predicted, yesterday the company formerly known as The Generations Network (TGN), formerly MyFamily.com, Inc, formerly Ancestry.com, formerly Ancestry Publishing, announced that it was changing its name to , the unpronounceable symbol recently abdicated by the artist previously and subsequently known as Prince.

Just kidding! The Generations Network changed their name to Ancestry.com. No, really! This time I kid you not. See their new corporate website, www.tgn.com, for the complete text of the announcement.

It’s ironic, don’t you think, that the new Ancestry.com corporate website and the announcement that they are no longer TGN is found on www.tgn.com. At the time of this writing, www.thegenerationsnetwork.com still points to the old TGN corporate website.

The problem of an appropriate corporate website address existed for MyFamily.com, Inc. They eventually found a home at www.myfamilyinc.com. It seems unlikely that the Ancestry.com corporate website will stay at www.tgn.com, but it remains to be seen where it will land.

The other problem that MyFamily.com, Inc. faced was the ambiguity of the name “MyFamily.com.” Nothing deflates an important business discussion like trying to explain whether you’re talking about the company or the website. “No, Ancestry.com is not part of MyFamily.com, it is part of MyFamily.com, Inc. No, the Ancestry.com website is not going away or being replaced by MyFamily.com. Yes, Ancestry.com provides the family tree feature of MyFamily.com, but if you want all of MyFamily.com, Inc.’s tree functionality, use Ancestry.com.”

I can only assume that this name change means one of two things:

  1. Ancestry.com (the company) executives lack corporate memory about the problems caused by naming the company after one of several web properties.
  2. MyFamily.com (the website) is dead, dying, or otherwise going away.

I have a lot of respect for current Ancestry.com (the company) management, so I’m betting on the latter. Look for Ancestry.com (the company) to close its MyFamily.com (the website) development office in Seattle as an indicator that this is the case.

Sorry, MyFamily.com (the website) fans. However, if Ancestry.com (the company) executives are looking for a good rest home for MyFamily.com (the website), I know of one in Orem…

3 comments:

  1. You can find the corporate website at http://corporate.ancestry.com.

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  2. This is the 1st I've heard that Ancestry.com is planning to drop MyFamily.com. If that's their plan, why are they spending time and money on a major site redesign?

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  3. Wonderful! Your comment about naming the company after the symbol used by Prince gave me my first laugh out loud moment of the day. Keep up the great info and the wonderful sense of humor!

    ReplyDelete

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