FamilyLink.com

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Becoming a Top 1,000 Web Property

Yesterday we set two traffic records. WorldVitalRecords.com had more than 36,000 unique visitors--6,000 higher than our two previous best days, earlier in April. And We're Related on Facebook had more than 105,000 daily active users.

One of the best parts about being an internet entrepreneur is how immediately your actions translate into measureable results. Our team members are working hard on search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, email marketing campaigns, and improving our affiliate marketing program. As each channel improves, the overall cumulative results are exciting.

Friday, January 11, 2008

World Vital Records record visitors and page views

World Vital Records President David Lifferth keeps the company well informed about our key metrics. I got this information from him yesterday in an email:

Friday, October 19, 2007

What our genealogy customers want

We use Qualtrics survey software (which we really like) and have a panel of customers who have agreed to answer survey questions every month. We appreciate the customers who are willing to take time to give us their opinions. We pay a great deal of attention to the feedback. We adjust our work and investment priorities based on what our customers tell us.

Our last survey had 15 questions. We received answers from 1,041 customers. Here are some interesting facts:

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Big news from my family (dot com)

The Generations Network, formerly MyFamily.com, announced today a $300 million acquisition by Spectrum Equity, a $4 billion private equity fund with offices in Menlo Park and Boston. It is expected that the current management team will continue to lead the company, which is headquartered in Provo, Utah.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

What to do with good news and bad news

Last week I sent an email to the investors in World Vital Records with a bunch of good news. We had a record sales week. We are signing more partnerships. Our marketing programs are gaining momentum. Our content collection is growing fast. One of them emailed back with a question: how are our Facebook apps doing?

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Upload Your Family Tree

FamilyLink.com, the social network for genealogists, is testing our new family tree software with GEDCOM upload functionality. The site and the tree are still in beta, but the feedback we are getting is encouraging. FamilyLink members are now uploading their trees and sharing them with others. Just yesterday we had 39,000 ancestor names uploaded. Geni.com got 5 million profiles in 5 months. At 39,000 in one day, we are running at the same pace.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Blogosphere: "MySpace for Genealogists"

Jeff Pytlewski, a genealogist for more than 12 years, has blogged about FamilyLink.com a couple of times. Here is his post from yesterday entitled "MySpace for Genealogists: FamilyLink...The Sequel."

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

World Vital Records Partnerships Announced

Today is a very big day for World Vital Records, a company that was started less than a year ago by a talented group that included several former Ancestry.com employees. This is quite likely the biggest day in our 11-month history.

At the NGS conference in Richmond, Virginia, the following new partnerships were announced:

Friday, May 11, 2007

Free podcast upload sites

We got permission the other day to take an 8 minute audio clip from the internet radio show interview that I did last week and share it with our FamilyLink.com audience. Kory Meyerink of Family Roots Radio and I discussed our new social network for family history. They have an archived version of the interview on their web site.

Saturday, May 05, 2007

FamilyLink Members in 34 Countries

Our development team added a new browse feature this week to our genealogy social network FamilyLink.com that lets members browse by country and by city to see the other genealogists around the world. I quickly counted up members in 34 countries. We have 43 in Australia and 40 in the U.K.