
Ancestry.com Acquires 1000memories (YC S10) - michaelfairley
http://blog.1000memories.com/170-ancestry-acquires-1000memories
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scott_s
I'm waiting for Facebook to acquire Ancestry.com and incorporate it into their
overall infrastructure.

My parents have used Ancestry.com quite a lot, and I realized that what's
being built there is a historical, online family network. That is, as you dig
into your family's past to find ancestors, you will find records of people
that others have made or added to. That, of course, means you have found other
people you're related to. Incorporating that into the current largest online
social network just seems so obvious to me that I'm surprised it hasn't
happened yet.

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joering2
Dear God, no! It would be like MyLife acquired Google (forget about the money)
and poisoned Goog search with their crap! Hope there is not enough money is
Zucks pocket to pull something like that!

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endlessvoid94
Think about what it _could_ be, rather than what you _fear_ it might turn
into.

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joelhaus
Ancestry.com is for sale[1] and it is the largest social network in the world
(granted, most profiles are inactive).

The potential is huge for an acquirer, however, it would be _relatively_ easy
for another social network to allow members to create profiles for the
deceased. In the future, many of today's social network connections might just
function as 1st person genealogical records (provided the companies can
sustain).

[1] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-22/ancestry-said-to-
se...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-22/ancestry-said-to-seek-higher-
buyout-bids-from-permira-and-tpg.html)

~~~
sadga
> most profiles are inactive

Beautiful euphemism for "died before the Internet was invented"

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zach
I've always wondered what 1000memories business cards look like, because I'd
totally love it if they were gravestones:

DAN WILLIAMS

BELOVED FOUNDER AND CTO

Okay, that was random, but congrats on the acquisition. Great fit.

~~~
Bretthuneycutt
Our product has evolved to become the 'new shoebox for your old photos'

Our business cards feature photos of us as kids, similar to our team page:
<http://1000memories.com/team>

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rdl
Wow, congrats. This seems like a natural fit for 1000memories, and great terms
for the customers. I hope it worked out well for the team and investors as
well.

It would be great if you could post a little more about how the deal went down
(in a hn-type blog post, not something aimed at your users) -- how long it
took, who approached whom, what parts were good or difficult, etc.

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JohnBooty
For whatever it's worth, I was reunited with my sister via Ancestry.com!

I'm not affiliated with either the Mormon Church or Ancestry.com... in fact,
my sister and I both canceled our Ancestry.com account before the trial period
was up and we never paid a dime. That was our first sign of proof we were
truly siblings.

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johnjones
That sounds like an interesting story. Would you mind sharing a few more
details? :)

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vyrotek
Congrats! So when does the team move to Utah? It's not so bad, we don't bite.

I know many developers at Ancestry.com and I hear it's a great place to work.
It sounds like you'll be able to continue to operate independently for while
but it might be time to brush up on your C# as they are .Net based company. :)

~~~
Bretthuneycutt
We're working from the SF/SOMA office (pretty sweet), and continuing to work
on the ShoeBox apps, our website, and related products as an independent team
within the company. No .Net for us - Ruby, Javascript, Java, and Objective-C.

With our new digs and resources, we're looking for talented engineers
(backend, frontend and mobile) and designers. Please email me at
brett@1000memories.com if you're interested.

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aberman
Great team, great product, natural fit. Congrats to Ancestry and 1000Memories.

~~~
Bretthuneycutt
thanks, rich!

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curiouslurker
Congrats! Is it an acquihire?

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Bretthuneycutt
No. ACOM is acquiring our product and users as well as our team, and we'll
continue invest in making ShoeBox and our website better and better.

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migfromparis
This is good news bravo.

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thehodge
Congratulations to all

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droithomme
Like all of ancestry's acquisitions, all this content that was gathered by
various people will now be placed behind a pay wall that ancestry will assert
ownership and control rights over.

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Bretthuneycutt
Not true. Our products will continue to exist for free, and we'll actually be
working on improving ACOM's sharing capabilities - i.e., bringing out its
great content from behind the pay wall so the wider family network can view
and appreciate it.

~~~
droithomme
> Not true.

You have a signed contract that says so? If not, you can't promise that since
you don't have that authority.

Ancestry has a long history of acquiring sites where people join in community
to work together on genealogy, and then destroying those sites, removing them
from competition. They are evil. I have no problem with them charging for
access to data they have paid to scan, convert and put together, that's a
great service to offer. But that's only part of their operations. A big other
part is the acquisition of publicly available free genealogy resources where
the hard work has been put together for free by the general public, and
eliminating those sites so that every imaginable genealogy related search only
goes to their pay sites. Their usability also sucks. They are predators that
destroy genealogy, and they are thieves. Enjoy your ill gotten wealth my
friend, I hope it is worth the eternity in hell that anyone associated with
this criminal organization has surely earned for their despicable acts. Or hey
why not just down vote inconvenient facts about a dangerous bad corporation
that causes great damage into oblivion, relax in the hot tub and drink another
marguerita while chuckling.

