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Family trees flourish on the internet
The internet is fertile ground for genealogy websites branching out to connect the dead and the living with a shared dream of drawing humanity's family tree. Spectrum Equity Investors underscored the success of online lineage-tracing websites on Wednesday by paying 300 million dollars for a majority stake in the parent company of Ancestry.com. Founded in the US state of Utah in 1983, The Generations Network operates Family History.com, publishes Ancestry Magazine, but is for the most part the Internet heritage-tracking portal Ancestry.com. Early genealogy websites provided online tools for ferreting out relatives from public records and other sources, winning the hearts of historians and amateurs curious about the branches of their family trees. Such websites have taken lessons from online social-networking superstars such as MySpace and Facebook, evolving into interactive forums where people can share their findings, pictures, and family histories. Websites enable people to connect their family trees with those of others in what operators hope will grow into an online outline of relationships between the world's human inhabitants. Ancestry.com's popularity surged after it added tools in July of 2006 letting heritage-seekers connect with each other online. It saw the creation of more than 3.8 million new family trees adorned with 330 million names along with pictures, testimonials, and scanned documents. Ancestry.com operates in eight countries and claims 900,000 paying subscribers. The website boasts 2.5 million active members and one-time visits from approximately 8.2 million people monthly.
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