WikiTree Announces Source-a-Thon

Genealogy community donates $3,000+ in prizes to support sourced genealogy

September 7, 2016: WikiTree will be kicking off Family History Month with a three-day sourcing marathon, October 1-3, 2016. Individuals and organizations from around the genealogy community are coming together to support this event by donating door prizes for participants. Over $3,000 in genealogy prizes have already been pledged.

Citing sources is required on WikiTree’s collaborative, free family tree, but inexperienced genealogists don't always record them. As Mags Gaulden, a WikiTree leader, states, “In a perfect world all genealogies would be well-sourced, but unfortunately this isn’t the case. We have all run across online genealogies that are just repeats, copy-and-pastes, of what someone else had thrown up based on what aunt Mabel told them back in the 70s.”

Second-hand family information deserves to be preserved and shared, but it needs to be verified. Generous genealogists in the WikiTree community help each other every day by confirming the information in unsourced profiles and adding citations. 200,000 profiles on WikiTree's 12-million person tree are currently identified as needing independent verification. The Source-a-Thon is a major community event to slash that number, draw attention to the importance of sources, and to have fun doing it.

Live chats will be hosted every few hours during the three-day event for participants to cheer each other on. During the chats, random winners will be drawn for valuable prizes including full memberships at MyHeritage, FindMyPast, Ancestry, Fold3, Newspapers.com, and GenealogyBank, DNA tests from Family Tree DNA, conference passes for RootsTech, software, books, gift certificates, t-shirts, research assistance, and much more.

To be eligible for door prizes, participants must register in advance and get a “race number.” See http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Source-a-Thon

Prize donations will be accepted until race day. Contact eowyn@wikitree.com if you would like to support the Source-a-Thon with a donation for participants.

WikiTree: The Free Family Tree has been growing since 2008. Community members privately collaborate with close family members on modern family history and publicly collaborate with other genealogists on deep ancestry. Since all the private and public profiles are connected on the same system this process is helping to grow a single, worldwide family tree that will eventually connect us all and thereby make it free and easy for anyone to discover their roots. See http://www.WikiTree.com.

5 New Year’s Resolutions Every Genealogist Should Set

For those who missed it, here is a link to an article I wrote for MyHeritage on December 31st. Hope you enjoy it even though we are already 11 days into the New Year!

New Year's always seems like a good time to make resolutions for doing better in our personal or business lives, or for accomplishing goals in the year ahead. But how many resolutions should we make? How many are we going to realistically keep?

Enthusiasm for change runs high in January. We are full of renewed energy. It’s a new year with the opportunity for new beginnings, and it is easy to become caught up in the fervor. But February and March often bring different emotions and our enthusiasm for the work that lies ahead can wane or drop off completely.

Continue reading at 5 New Year’s Resolutions Every Genealogist Should Set

Remember, it's never too late!

FamilySearch Works to Put the World’s Historical Records Online in One Generation

FamilySearch Works to Put the World’s Historical Records Online in One Generation

See Related Infographic

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH—FamilySearch International (online at FamilySearch.org) is leading the way in digitizing and providing access to billions of historical genealogical records by collaborating with commercial family history companies and the online community. This collaboration will carve centuries off the time needed to increase access to the world’s historical records, enabling millions more people to quickly discover, share, and preserve family memories for generations.

Recent announcements of agreements with commercial family history companies are some of the first installments in fulfilling FamilySearch’s desire to remove the traditional barriers to genealogical research. FamilySearch CEO, Dennis Brimhall, explains that joining forces with other organizations, where possible, brings significantly more financial investment and technological resources to the family history industry than the nonprofit community could provide on its own.

FamilySearch plans to collaborate on digitization projects with commercial family history companies to publish new historical records collections on FamilySearch.org that have never seen the light of the Internet. Working with individual industry leaders such as Ancestry.com , Archives.com, findmypast, Fold3, and MyHeritage will also increase and broaden access to the records FamilySearch has already published online. FamilySearch plans to involve many other interested organizations that will provide records, tools, and other resources to allow more people to build, preserve, and share their family trees online.

In a keynote address at the RootsTech 2013 conference, Brimhall shared FamilySearch’s vision to empower people globally to share their family memories and save them for future generations. “Imagine if your ancestors had easy access to computers, digital cameras, and family history websites that allowed them to upload, preserve, and share important family memories through photos, stories, and vital names, dates, and places? How amazing would that be?” Brimhall said.

FamilySearch and its predecessors have been preserving and providing access to the world’s family history records for over 100 years. FamilySearch volunteers have indexed just over three billion records in extraction and online indexing projects, but they have only scratched the surface.
“For the top countries with the highest online research demand, using our existing resources and volunteers, it will take up to 300 years to index the 5.3 billion records that we already have,” Brimhall noted. “That means you and me and the next 10 generations of our posterity would not live to personally benefit from them. And there are another 60 billion records that still need to be digitally preserved. We can do significantly better by working together with other organizations and as a community.”

As new historical record collections are published under the latest agreements with FamilySearch’s affiliates, they will be available on FamilySearch.org and for free on Ancestry.com, findmypast.com, or MyHeritage.com to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. FamilySearch offers free public access to Ancestry.com and findmypast.com through 4,715 local FamilySearch-owned family history centers worldwide. Additional details regarding expanded records access will be announced sometime in 2014, when they are available.

Infographic: Putting the World’s Historical Records Online in One Generation

Big News! MyHeritage and FamilySearch Partnership Announcement

TEL AVIV, Israel & SALT LAKE CITY, Utah--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

MyHeritage, the popular online family history network, and FamilySearch.org announced today the signing and commencement of a strategic partnership that forges a new path for the family history industry.

Under this multi-year partnership, MyHeritage will provide FamilySearch with access to its powerful technologies and FamilySearch will share billions of global historical records and family tree profiles spanning hundreds of years with MyHeritage. This will help millions of MyHeritage and FamilySearch users discover even more about their family history.

“For more than a hundred years, FamilySearch has been dedicated to working with the world’s archives to preserve their records for future generations”

FamilySearch will provide MyHeritage with more than 2 billion records from its global historic record collections and its online Family Tree. These records will be added to SuperSearch, MyHeritage’s search engine for historical records, and will be matched with family trees on MyHeritage using its matching technologies.

MyHeritage users will gain access to an unprecedented boost of historical records and family tree profiles, which are key to researching and reconstructing their family histories. This reinforces MyHeritage's position as an international market leader, with gigantic assets of family trees and records, which are the most globally diverse in the industry.

FamilySearch members will benefit from MyHeritage's unique technologies which automate family history discoveries. Smart Matching™ automatically finds connections between user-contributed family trees and Record Matching automatically locates historical records relevant to any person in the family tree. By receiving accurate matches between FamilySearch’s Family Tree profiles and historical record collections, such as birth, death, census, and immigration documents, FamilySearch members will be able to more effectively grow their family trees in size and in depth and add conclusions supported by historical records.

“For more than a hundred years, FamilySearch has been dedicated to working with the world’s archives to preserve their records for future generations” said Gilad Japhet, Founder and CEO of MyHeritage. “Their massive undertaking has made family history more accessible to everyone. This partnership highlights MyHeritage’s technology leadership and our firm commitment to adding historical records on a massive global scale, accelerating our vision of helping families everywhere explore and share their legacy online. We look forward to a fruitful future working hand in hand with our friends at FamilySearch.”

“FamilySearch values collaborative partnerships that enable more people, in more places, to discover their family history” said Dennis Brimhall, CEO of FamilySearch. “MyHeritage is an innovative company that has a fast growing, global online audience. We are excited to commence this partnership which enables FamilySearch to better serve the global family history community.”

Last Day for Free Access Entire US Census Collection

In honor of Labor Day, you can enjoy free access to the complete US Census collection on MyHeritage from August 31 through September 2 - during Labor Day weekend.

Here's the link to access the  entire US census records free this weekend

 

For more census links to US Census and Canadian Census records visit AllCensusRecords.com

Geni.com adds historical records to advance family tree collaboration

Major new features launched to help Geni.com users enrich the World Family Tree and discover unknown relatives 

Los Angeles, USA – April 23 2013: Geni.com, the leader in collaborative family history, today announced the release of two major new features, Record Matching and Smart Matching™, which enrich family trees with relevant historical records and help users discover unknown relatives and ancestors, respectively. This will add significant new detail and color to the World Family Tree, a global initiative by Geni.com that shows how everyone in the world is related, and will help members learn more about their shared ancestries.

The move upgrades Geni.com from a family tree network into a more comprehensive service that includes historical records, fulfilling the promise of its parent company MyHeritage that acquired Geni.com in November 2012. Record Matching and Smart Matching™ are unique technologies developed by MyHeritage which are now made available on Geni.com for the first time. They are designed to automatically search the massive MyHeritage database and suggest matching historical records and family connections that can then be added by users in one click to their family tree on Geni.com.

These new enhancements will illuminate the legacies of the millions of individuals in the World Family Tree, and allow the community to conduct family history research collectively. Enabling members to immediately leverage the work of fellow family historians without duplication is an industry-first. Once a record is confirmed and added to the World Family tree, sources and citations are automatically created, allowing users to view information in the right context. This makes the World Family Tree a more accurate and better documented resource, like the value added by footnotes at the bottom of every article in Wikipedia.

“We’re thrilled to integrate MyHeritage’s groundbreaking features of Record Matching and Smart Matching™ and extend them to our loyal community of Geni.com members and curators”, said Noah Tutak, formerly CEO of Geni.com and now General Manager, USA of MyHeritage. “By adding historical records and unique family tree matching capabilities to the World Family Tree, it becomes the authoritative reference for the human family tree and the go-to resource for anyone interested in family history. This is a great stride in advancing Geni.com to fulfill its mission.”

Record MatchingRecord Matching is the next generation of family history exploration. It finds matches between family trees and a massive database of global historical records on Geni.com’s parent site, MyHeritage. The records include birth, marriage, death and divorce documents, gravestone photos, census information, military, immigration and other documents. It’s the only service of its kind to automatically find relevant newspaper articles, books and other free text content through semantic analysis, to shed light on the actual lives, personalities and achievements of one’s ancestors.

Smart Matching™Smart Matching™ automatically finds matches for family trees on Geni.com in the global database of family trees, containing more than a billion profiles, on its parent site MyHeritage. These matches allow Geni.com members to grow their family tree, discover new ancestors and relatives, connect with other family tree owners and reunite with long lost family members. Sophisticated name-matching technology uses synonyms, phonetics and international variations to facilitate discoveries despite differences in spelling and language.

The two matching technologies work together in a cycle that constantly pushes forward the users' knowledge of their family history. They were both developed by MyHeritage and integrated into Geni.com by the companies’ combined engineering teams.

Record Matches and Smart Matches™ are displayed on Geni.com family trees and individual profiles. Users can also view a list of all Record Matches and Smart Matches™ in their Merge Center, where they can sort, view, confirm or reject them. Confirming a match adds a reference to the tree on Geni.com in a single click. These features will continue to improve over time; planned enhancements include regular email updates about new matches and the ability to extract information from records into Geni.com using a convenient interface.

Record Matches are displayed for free as an extract and a range of record collections can be viewed in full for free. For full access to every type of historical record and to all Smart Matches, users are offered an affordable Data subscription. The same subscription also provides full and unlimited access to SuperSearch, the powerful search engine for historical records on MyHeritage.

Anyone can join, contribute to and benefit from the World Family Tree by signing up to Geni at www.geni.com. Basic accounts are free and are unlimited in size.

MyHeritage Subscription to Give Away

Yesterday I received an email from my friend Mark at MyHeritage.com. Here's part of his email:

Hi Lorine

Happy Birthday!

For your Birthday I'm giving you a free MyHeritage yearlong subscription to give away however or whenever you like.

Mark added that he couldn't give a subscription to me because I already have one! So he thought it would be fun for me to give one away.

So that's what I'm doing. My husband wanted me to reveal my age (xx) and tell everyone that the xx person to email me would get the subscription. Well that's not happening! I'm not about to announce my age in public. So, next best thing...

Since my website Olive Tree Genealogy is 17 years old this winter (gulp!!) and my Olive Tree Genealogy blog is 10 years old this coming February, I'm adding their years together. That means that....

The 27th person to email me at otg.giveaway@gmail.com gets the membership! 

Please put MYHERITAGE SUBSCRIPTION in the subject of your email 

****** UPDATE******

We have a winner! Judy Burdick was the 27th person to email me at otg.giveaway@gmail.com 

Congrats Judy and thank you to Mark and MyHeritage!

***************************

I'll announce the winner here as soon as I hear from the 27th person. Don't forget to give me your full name and email in your note. No need to tell me why you want the membership, just email me.

Record Matching - a New Technology from MyHeritage

The following Press Release was received by Olive Tree Genealogy. This looks really promising!

MyHeritage releases breakthrough Record Matching technology for family history

Discoveries made easy: Millions of MyHeritage users to automatically receive relevant newspaper clippings and historical records, adding color to their family history

PROVO, Utah & LONDON & TEL AVIV, Israel – September 19, 2012: MyHeritage, the world’s largest family network, today announced the release of Record Matching, an innovative new technology set to change the face of the family history market. Record Matching will help millions of families learn more about their past by automatically discovering relevant historical records and newspaper articles dating back 300 years.

Record Matching is the next generation of family history exploration. It saves time by automating online research for users’ family trees, breaking through “brick walls” for dedicated genealogists, and giving beginners a significant boost with their family tree research. It works by comparing more than one billion profiles in family trees created by MyHeritage users to more than four billion historical records, to find relevant matches. It’s the only service of its kind to automatically research newspaper articles, books and other free text content through semantic analysis, to find articles that can shed light on the actual lives, personalities and achievements of one’s ancestors.  The Internet has helped bring family history to mainstream audiences, by allowing some of the research traditionally done in libraries and archives to be done online. Record Matching now simplifies online research by conducting it automatically.

Supporting 38 languages, MyHeritage has become the trusted home on the web for families worldwide wishing to explore their family history, share memories and stay connected. In addition to its expertise on collaborative family tree building, over the past year MyHeritage has positioned itself as a leading provider of historical records. Record Matching is an add-on feature for SuperSearch, the search engine for historical records successfully released by MyHeritage in June 2012.

MyHeritage Founder and CEO, Gilad Japhet, said: “Record Matching is a family history discovery maker and time saver, designed to delight both dedicated family historians and people with a casual interest in their ancestry. Over the past year we’ve expanded our consumer offering by complementing our social family tree network with a substantial amount of historical content. Record Matching now ties these two assets together, adding exciting new value for our users and giving us a unique edge in the family history market. It’s a significant step towards realizing our goal of bringing family history to the masses.” 

Record Matching utilizes the current global pool of more than four billion records on MyHeritage, including strong collections in the USA, UK, Ireland, Australia and Canada, with more content being added daily for additional countries. Users can receive birth, marriage and divorce documents, gravestone photos, death, burial and census information, military, immigration and other types of records in their Record Matches. More information about the lives of relatives and ancestors can be revealed in Record Matches from the world’s largest historical newspaper collection licensed to MyHeritage (currently about 120 million pages dating back to the 18th century), books and other free text materials. Record Matches also cover the 1930 and 1940 US census records and the content from MyHeritage-owned family history websites, WorldVitalRecords and FamilyLink. 

Developed in-house by MyHeritage engineers and family history experts, Record Matching technology is designed to mimic the work of a family historian as much as possible, finding matches that a human would consider plausible, and ruling out matches that a researcher would consider as incorrect. Based on multiple genealogical algorithms that match information in the record (names, dates, facts, relationships, etc.) to the information in the family tree, semantic analysis, statistical engines and a false positive prevention sub-system, Record Matching provides a high degree of accuracy without sacrificing flexibility. Through its use of massive computational resources and systematic approach of comparing every person to every record, Record Matching makes discoveries that many users would not have the time or luck to find on their own.

Record Matching technology augments MyHeritage’s flagship Smart Matching™ technology that compares family trees to other family trees. The two technologies work together in a cycle that constantly pushes forward the users' knowledge of their family history. MyHeritage users will receive weekly email updates of their new Record Matches. On the MyHeritage.com website, all Record Matches found are consolidated in one interactive report, where users can conveniently review, filter, sort, confirm and reject their matches.

Record Matching has flexible phonetic and multilingual capabilities when researching names, covering many possible synonyms, different spellings and international variations.  Record Matches have an individual confidence score and can be viewed by person or by data collection. Additional features, such as saving information from Record Matches into online family trees, creating references and source citations and displaying real-time matches whenever a new person is added into the tree, will be added before the end of 2012.

As of today, Record Matching will run periodically for every user who has a family tree on MyHeritage. Record Matches found will be displayed for free as a shortened extract. For full access to the historical records delivered by Record Matches, MyHeritage offers affordable data subscription plans and pay-as-you-go credits which are also good for use on SuperSearch, the MyHeritage search engine for historical records. In complimentary collections under license, such as Ellis Island and Find-A-Grave, MyHeritage users will enjoy full access to the Record Matches for free. Family tree enthusiasts interested in receiving Record Matches are welcome to sign up for free at MyHeritage, import their family tree or build a new one using the site’s friendly tools, and receive their matches in less than 24 hours.

MyHeritage hits one billion profiles

The following Press Release was received by Olive Tree Genealogy yesterday. 

PROVO, Utah & LONDON & TEL AVIV, Israel – June 11, 2012: MyHeritage, the most popular family network on the web, today announced that it has reached the milestone of one billion profiles. The billion individuals in nearly 23 million family trees, created by the millions of families using MyHeritage worldwide, constitute a gigantic network for discovering family heritage and connecting to relatives.

With more than 63 million registered users, MyHeritage has become the trusted home on the web for families wishing to explore their family history, share memories and stay connected. Combining the world’s largest international pool of family tree data with billions of historical records, MyHeritage helps break through brick walls in family history research. The site is available in 38 languages.

Approximately one million profiles are added every day to the MyHeritage network, and on average 600 thousand new registered users join every month. A sophisticated technology called Smart Matching™ fuels new family discoveries by matching profiles in different family trees, creating new family connections every day for users.

“Reaching one billion profiles is an important milestone in the prolific growth of MyHeritage, solidifying our position as the international go-to destination for families,” said Founder and CEO of MyHeritage, Gilad Japhet. “We constantly strive to develop cutting-edge technologies that create a network effect within this big data resource. As more content is uploaded to MyHeritage by our users around the world, they discover more family connections and relevant historical documents, adding color and depth to their family history. With a billion profiles and some exciting new innovations in store, we look forward to continuing our phenomenal growth in the coming years.”

Approximately half of the billion family tree profiles on MyHeritage are living people, enabling users to connect to relatives, collaborate on family history research and share memories. The other half billion profiles who are deceased help connect the living through shared ancestors. With a diverse user base, spanning every country and continent, MyHeritage represents a gateway to a massive variety of family histories from different cultures, religions and ethnic backgrounds.

The company’s expansion into historical content, following its acquisition of family history sites WorldVitalRecords and FamilyLink in November 2011 and its April 2012 announcement to provide the 1940 U.S. Census free of charge, has turned MyHeritage into a leading site for family history research, whilst continuing in parallel its focus on current-day family engagement. The MyHeritage mobile app, launched in December 2011, enables families to share special everyday moments and explore their family history all-on-the-go, and has amassed more than 750 thousand installations already.

Protecting the privacy of users and their family trees, information on living people is not disclosed and collaboration on family tree research is by invitation only.

New App from MyHeritage for Searching Records including 1940 U.S. Census

  The following announcement was sent to Olive Tree Genealogy by MyHeritage. MyHeritage was the first to put up indexes of the newly released 1940 U.S. Census and they continue to lead the field in their endeavors

World’s largest family network unveils new mobile experience for searching historical records, including the 1940 U.S. Census, on iPhone, iPad and Android 

PROVO, Utah & LONDON & TEL AVIV, Israel – April 5, 2012: MyHeritage, the most popular family network on the web, today announced the ability to search billions of historical records, including the 1940 U.S. Census, on-the-go via a new version of the free MyHeritage Mobile App for iPhone, Android and iPad. The new version 1.2 of the MyHeritage App also searches more than 22 million family trees, helping users with their family history research. The move further extends MyHeritage’s leadership by offering an intuitive and exciting experience for families to discover more about the lives of their American relatives in 1940 and to trace their roots around the world, all on-the-go.

The MyHeritage Mobile App was first introduced in December 15, 2011 and has since amassed an install base of more than 500,000. In addition to searching historical content, it allows users to take their family tree on-the-go with an attractive display specially suited for mobile devices, capture family moments for future generations and stay in touch with family anytime, anywhere.

As millions of people rush to satisfy their curiosity and access the 1940 US census - one of the most significant sets of historical records ever to be released - MyHeritage is currently the only commercial player offering both a complete set of images from all US states and a preliminary searchable index, available via the new MyHeritage App and on www.myheritage.com/1940census. Access is completely free and no registration is required.

All 3.8 million images of the 1940 U.S. Census, and the initial collection of indexed records searchable by names, facts and other criteria, are now available to explore for free on the MyHeritage App, downloadable from the App Store or Google Play (formerly Android Market). The app can search the entire MyHeritage data collection of more than four billion records, many exclusive to MyHeritage, including birth, marriage, death, immigration and military records, census records, newspapers, yearbooks and much more. Available in more than 20 languages, the app enables family history lovers all over the world to explore their family’s history.

More DNA Testing Choices: MyHeritage brings DNA testing to the global community

The following Press Release came to Olive Tree Genealogy Blog today:

PROVO, Utah & LONDON & TEL AVIV, Israel – February 16, 2012: MyHeritage, the
most popular family network on the web, announced today the integration of DNA
testing into its core family history offering. The move adds genetic genealogy to the
company’s suite of tools for researching family history, used by millions of families
around the world.

With more than 62 million registered users and 21 million family trees, MyHeritage
has become the trusted home on the web for families wishing to explore their family
history, share memories and stay connected. With the new biological layer added to the
MyHeritage experience, users can now enjoy a service combining science, intuitive web
features and social networking for discovering and sharing their family legacy.

“DNA testing provides a fascinating new way to discover one’s origins and
find previously unknown relatives”, said MyHeritage Founder and CEO Gilad
Japhet. “Offering the highest quality DNA tests to our tens of millions of users around
the world in 38 languages, and providing DNA matches with hundreds of thousands
of people who have already had their DNA tested, significantly advances our mission
of bringing family history to the masses. By combining DNA with our innovative Smart
Matching™ technology, families will be closer than ever before to constructing a more
complete picture of their history”.

DNA is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms. By
purchasing a simple cheek-swab DNA test, users can now use information contained
in their DNA to find present-day relatives who share a common ancestor up to many
hundreds of years ago. A DNA test can also reveal ethnic origins such as Native
American, African or Jewish descent on paternal or maternal lines, as well as uncover
ancestral information for those who were adopted. While DNA tests can break through
brick walls in family history research by revealing biological relations, MyHeritage’s
flagship Smart Matching™ technology then steps in to help piece together the paper
trail by uncovering how the family trees of related people actually connect. In addition,
people with the same paternal surname can get together via MyHeritage to see if
they’re related by DNA.

MyHeritage is introducing today a wide range of DNA tests to meet different research
objectives and budgets, with special discounted prices for MyHeritage subscribers
starting from as low as $84. Users can identify the deep ancestral origins of their direct
paternal line (Y-DNA), of their direct maternal line (mtDNA), find relatives across all
lines via autosomal DNA (Family Finder), receive a percentage breakdown of their
ethnic roots and confirm or disprove whether someone is a close relative. View the full
list of the DNA kits on MyHeritage and a list of Frequently Asked Questions about
DNA tests on MyHeritage.

For the analysis of users’ DNA tests and the DNA matching, MyHeritage is working
with long-time partner and global leader in genealogy DNA, Family Tree DNA. Pioneers
of genetic genealogy and with a state-of-the-art laboratory, Family Tree DNA has
established the world’s largest DNA database for genealogy and is well known for
its work with National Geographic on the Genographic Project. All information is kept
strictly confidential and is never shared.

Bennett Greenspan, President and CEO of Family Tree DNA said “We’re proud to
work with MyHeritage to bring DNA testing to a much wider, global audience. The
phenomenal size and reach of the global MyHeritage family network will create new
horizons in collecting DNA data, helping many more people discover their ancestral
origins”.

MyHeritage App Available so I Check it Out

Yesterday Olive Tree Genealogy received an email from MyHeritage announcing their new app:

The new MyHeritage app for iPhone, iPad & Android was finally released today, after months of hard work by our really wonderful team, to help get MyHeritage users the best family tree app in the industry. 

Version 1.0 includes an HTML5 version of the family tree with profile pages designed especially for mobile, photo-sharing feature that syncs with your family site and a cool celebrity look-alike feature (aka MyCeleb). You can read more about the current version on www.myheritage.com/mobile. Next versions will add more and more great features, starting with editing of the tree straight from your mobile device and followed by everything you love about MyHeritage.

I'm not a member of MyHeritage but I downloaded the app to my iPhone to have a look. I can't use the first two features (Family Tree and Share Photos) without signing up on MyHeritage.

But I did have a lot of fun with the third choice -MyCeleb.

When you choose MyCeleb you have a choice to choose an existing photo or take a new one. I chose to take one. After I took it, a popup explained that the photo would be uploaded to MyHeritage for processing but then deleted.

I okayed the upload and waited. It took only a few seconds and my matches showed. I had a good chuckle as my best match was with Elton John! But I can kind of see why - my photo looks like your typical driver's licence mug shot and I have no makeup on!

 My other matches were Toni Morrison, Anna Sophia Robb and Gary Oldman - go figure...

I did have fun though, trying different photos and angles to see who I'd be matched with. I liked it when MyCeleb matched me with Jessica Lange - I must remember to always pose that way.

Then I tried hubs and he got some very flattering matches - Patrick Stewart and Mel Gibson were his top two.

Anyway it really was fun and I think the more serious part of this app will almost certainly be helpful to genealogists.

Press Release: MyHeritage acquires FamilyLink.com and WorldVitalRecords.com

MyHeritage acquires FamilyLink.com and WorldVitalRecords.com to enter US market

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.