MA-MENDON-L Archives

From: "AGFranks" <>
Subject: [MA-MENDON] Rootsweb is joining Ancestry.com
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2008 07:57:53 -0600

Good Morning All:

One of our subscribers, Marcia Payne, sent this to me this morning. While I
was aware of this merger, I did not have the full details, and still I don't
know what the outcome will be.

Please read and if you do have questions there is an address you can send
your questions to. We won't discuss this on the list in detail, but for
additional information that comes to me I will pass it along.

Let me say this - there is much to be had from Rootsweb, and I do recommend
that you all go and see what you can find out there. Because this has come
about I will allow questions to be asked for help on finding various places
to research in other places besides our own area that surrounds Mendon.
This will be *ONLY* for today and tomorrow.

Beware the Ides of March to day 15 March 2008 and tomorrow Sunday 16 March
2009

Please one request per person.

The following was written by Tim Sullivan, CEO of The Generations Network,
Inc. and is posted here at the RootsWeb blog:
_http://bigfile.rootsweb.com/newsroom/?p=111_
(http://bigfile.rootsweb.com/newsroom/?p=111)

this came to me from our Web-Master.Patrice of. Fl.

As you know, The Generations Network has hosted and funded the RootsWeb
online community since June 2000, thereby maintaining RootsWeb as the
world's oldest and largest free genealogy website. TGN remains committed to
this mission and believes that RootsWeb is an absolutely invaluable and
complementary resource to Ancestry.com, our flagship commercial family
history site. We believe in both services and want to see both communities
prosper and grow.

As part of this goal, we have decided to "transplant" RootsWeb onto the
Ancestry.com domain beginning next week. This move will not change the
RootsWeb experience or alter the ease of navigation to or within RootsWeb.
RootsWeb will remain a free online experience. What will be different is
that the Web address for all RootsWeb pages will change from www.
rootsweb.com to www. rootsweb.ancestry.com. Again, the RootsWeb experience
is not changing.

The decision to host RootsWeb on Ancestry.com is being made for one primary
reason: we believe that the users of each of our two main websites can be
better served if they have access to the best services available on both.
Simply stated, we want to introduce more Ancestry.com users to RootsWeb and
vice versa.

Today, despite the fact that Ancestry.com and RootsWeb.com are the two most
frequently visited family history sites on the Web, only 25 percent of
visitors to Ancestry.com visited RootsWeb in January 2008, while only 20
percent of visitors to RootsWeb visited Ancestry.com (according to Comscore
Media Metrix). We think we will serve our users best by doing a better job
of letting them know what is available on both Ancestry.com and RootsWeb.
Hosting RootsWeb on Ancestry.com is the first step towards making this
happen, but we will absolutely look for more and better ways down the road
to advance this goal.

Hosting RootsWeb on Ancestry.com will also make it easier for us to make
changes and improvements to the RootsWeb experience in the future.

All old RootsWeb URLs will continue to work, whether they are bookmarks or
favorites, links to or from a hosted page or URLs manually typed in your
Internet browser. We will have a redirect in place so that all old URLs will
automatically end up on the appropriate new RootsWeb URL. You will never
need to update your old favorites or links unless you want to. We have
worked to make the transition as seamless as possible for our users, and
this change should have a minimal impact on your experience with the site.

RootsWeb will remain a free online experience dedicated to providing you
with a place where our community can find their roots together. If you have
questions regarding this change please email them to
<mailto:> .

Thanks,

Tim Sullivan

CEO

The Generations Network, Inc.


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• [MA-MENDON] Rootsweb is joining Ancestry.com by "AGFranks" <>