Trading Big On Family Ties

While Facebook grabs the spotlight over its phenomenal growth and astounding estimated value, there's another big winner in social networking – and it may be connected to your family.

It’s Ancestry.com and, by most accounts, it's an unqualified business success since the Provo, Utah-based company went public in November 2009 with its stock during the worst recession this country has seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Investor's Business Daily reports Ancestry.com recently saw subscriber growth climb higher than expected. The company says it ended 2010 with 1.4 million subscribers, up 31 percent from Q4 2009, and up slightly from the third quarter. It had forecast 1.38 million subscribers.

More than a million subscribers for an online genealogy business? That’s a lot of folks tracing their family’s roots, and the growth factor surely makes this company the envy of many online and print competitors.

“The real question is: Is this a 2 million, 3 million, 5 million or 10 million subscriber category?” says Ancestry.com CEO Tim Sullivan.

“We're more optimistic today about this being a potentially very large market opportunity than ever before.”

From Humble Start

The world's largest online genealogy resource – launched in 1997 as a website for a publisher of genealogical reference books and magazines – sees signs that its business is moving beyond a lucrative niche and into the mainstream, reports IBD’s Patrick Seitz.

The public's interest in learning their family history is growing thanks to social networking at websites, such as Facebook, and the NBC reality TV show, “Who Do You Think You Are?”

Ancestry is a sponsor and an expert resource on the show, which tracks the family histories of celebrities including Lionel Richie, Kim Cattrall, Sarah Jessica Parker, Emmitt Smith, Matthew Broderick, Lisa Kudrow, Susan Sarandon, Spike Lee, Brooke Shields, Vanessa Williams, Rosie O'Donnell, Ashley Judd and Tim McGraw.

Working With Facebook

On the social networking front, Ancestry is looking to leverage Facebook communities more to build interest in its subscription service,” Seitz writes.

Ancestry posted sales of $82.7 million, up 38 percent from a year earlier and slightly better than analyst forecasts, according to IBD.

Ancestry is established in five major consumer markets: the United States, U.K., Canada, Australia and Sweden. It has an emerging presence in Germany, France and China.

Company goals for this year include improving the experience for new subscribers, expanding its Facebook presence and developing apps for tablet computers and smartphones, Seitz writes.

Ancestry was once seen as an online service to access digitized documents such as census, birth, death, marriage and military records, Sullivan says.

But now subscribers share photos, documents, stories and family trees that they've uploaded, he tells IBD.

Awed By Growth

I’ve used Ancestry.com on and off since 2004, when a former co-worker and friend of mine got me hooked on tracing my ancestors. In those days, it was exciting to merely find family member names in the site’s U.S. census files.

Since then, Ancestry’s growing database has been nothing short of amazing, especially when it bought rivals (i.e. Genealogy.com and Footnote.com) and expanded services, such as access to military-related records.

But while Ancestry outmuscles the paid subscription competition, there’s a major rival building a strong following – FamilySearch.org – a free website sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

An army of volunteers has been adding millions of records from the United States and archives from around the world to the FamilySearch site.

Ancestry’s membership fees aren’t cheap and, given today’s troubled economy, many seeking clues to their family’s past are likely to turn first to a free website before any paid site.

I don’t know about you, but free has a nice ring to it!

Ken Cocuzzo