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I had the pleasure of being next to some of the engineers from Ancestry.com in the queue for the WWDC keynote this year - it was really interesting to hear abou
by objclxt 14y ago
I had the pleasure of being next to some of the engineers from Ancestry.com in the queue for the WWDC keynote this year - it was really interesting to hear about a business that you don't think is that big, but is actually massive. They said Europe was also a very big market for them (I know genealogy is quite popular in the UK at least - the TV show that the article cites, 'Who Do You Think You Are', was originally a BBC show first), so being acquired by a European private equity firm makes some sense.
- chaostheory 14y agoI just wish Ancentry would spend some time and resources for the Asian market.
- mc32 14y agoThat's probably an opportunity for someone to pick up. Keep in mind that the data is more easily obtainable thanks to the household registries institutionalized in East Asia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system] which record familial information such as parents, professions, dates, residence changes, etc.
- lallysingh 14y agoIndia's gonna be tough -- records tend to be maintained on sheets of leather in ink, by a fellow who'll need a decent bribe to let you see it. Enough to let him copy all his data --- maybe that's doable in scale for everyone, but who knows? (Note: this is from my Dad, and it's up-to-date as of ~2 years ago, at least for his old village).
- hef19898 14y agoYeah, I believe that europe is actually a big market for that. Would be interessting to see if the ancestry.com guys hit the same fogy barrier the 30-years war presents in most of central europe. What I never imagined was that there's enough of a market to come up with a 1.6 billion company. Job well done though!