Reactions to story from TechCrunch
Family Tree Wars Continue: MyHeritage Raises Big Round, Shows Impressive Growth
http://www.techcrunch.com/ 2008/ 09/ 06/ family-tree-w...
It's been just a few days after our post on Geni's big growth numbers - and now big news from Israeli competitor MyHeritage. The site has grown from 180 million profiles a year ago to 260 million today, they say. Registered users have also grown, from 17 million to 25 million. Compare that to almost 2 million users for Geni. 230 million photos have been uploaded to the site, which is available in 25 languages and has 5 million monthly unique visitors. Support for ten more language will be released this month. Investors have certainly noticed MyHeritage's stellar growth.
Reactions / posts that link to this post
-
Super-rychlý exit rodinné social sítě Kindo
http://buzzmag.cz/super-rychly-exit-rodinne-social-site-kind...Britský startup Kindo.com, který se zaměřuje na rodinné rodokmeny byl po své roční existenci pohlcen izraelským MyHeritage, který se těší přízni 25 milionů uživatelů a do kterého nedávno investovali Accel Partners a Index Ventures. Finanční stránka akvizice nebyla zveřejněna, což nasvědčuje tomu, že se zřejmě nejednalo o exit roku, co se profitu zakladatelů týká. Každopádně je tak Kindo jeden z mála startupů se super-rychým exitem. Kindo na svém blogu píše, že odkup se konal na základě “sdílení stejné vize a hodnot”. Ouriel Ohayon z amerického TechCrunche spekuluje , že si MyHeritage od akvizice slibuje rozšíření své prezence v Europě právě přes službu Kindo, která je k dispozici ve 14 jazycích, vč. ruštiny, arabštiny a čínštiny. Vzhledem ke slušně konkurenčnímu prostředí, ve Státech je leaderem Geni.com, v Německu je to Verwandt. Kindo dříve získalo “seed kapitál” od estonských Ambient Sound Investments, The Accelerator Group (TAG) a od Stefana Glänzera, prvního investora do last.fm (vedl jej až do pohlcení společností CBS). Tisková zpráva v češtině k přečtení tady. Post from: BuzzMag
-
MyHeritage Acquires Family Social Network Kindo for Next Generation Family Tree
http://www.sociableblog.com/2008/09/23/myheritage-acquires-f...Israel-based startup MyHeritage, one of the world’s most popular family-based social network for helping users create their family trees, is acquiring UK based family social network Kindo. The amount of the acquisition is not announced. MyHeritage, recently funded by Accel and Index Ventures has more than 25 million members worldwide and is known for its powerful technology that helps families research their history and stay connected, including Smart Matching and automatic photo tagging. The Kindo team’s experience in social networking will help MyHeritage realize its vision to be the Facebook for families. As part of this acquisition, MyHeritage will also establish new commercial operations in London. “Adding the Kindo team to MyHeritage puts the company in an even stronger position to realize its vision of connecting families around the world,” said Gilad Japhet, founder and CEO of MyHeritage. “The synergy of our innovative, sophisticated technology and Kindo’s social networking and marketing expertise will further solidify our position as industry leader. Kindo successfully created a friendly service with an excellent reputation and great base of users.” Kindo’s users can now get easy access to Myheritage’s unique technology, helping them discover and learn even more about their family history. They will also benefit from MyHeritage’s photo tagging technology, which automatically scans and identifies people in photos, making it easier for families to organize, search and share their photos. Kindo was funded by TAG and Ambient Sound Investment (a fund created by ex Skype engineers). Founded by CEO Gilad Japhet, MyHeritage helps people around the world discover, connect and communicate with their extended family network and easily research their family history. The service is unique in its international reach, currently translated into 25 languages with more to follow. Combining MyHeritage and Kindo will create a larger family network and instantly provide more value to its collective user base. CrunchBase Information Kindo myHeritage Information provided by CrunchBase
-
Fast exit - UK’s Kindo acquired by Israel’s MyHeritage
http://uk.techcrunch.com/2008/09/23/fast-exit-uks-kindo-acqu...UK based, Kindo.com a family tree service, has been acquired by the Israeli based MyHeritage, which was recently funded by Accel and Index Ventures. The size of the deal was not disclosed, but it’s a fast exit for Kindo which only launched last year. Although Kindo says on their blog that the buy-out took place because “we share the same vision and values”, I think it is also a reasonable assumption that the current financial climate concentrated their minds. Getting a second round of funding for a standalone product in a competitive market was always going to be hard now. So why would MyHeritage, with 25 million users, but Kindo? TechCrunch US speculates that it’s about extending it’s presence in Europe with an existing team and Kindo’s extensive 14 language service (including Russian, Arabic and Chinese). (ironic, isn’t it that an Israeli-backed services which scaled in the US now returns to Europe to buy a local site which scaled regionally in Europe?) It also needs to have a response to Geni.com in the US and Verwandt in Germany. But the main difference with Kindo is that where as Ancestry.com is about ancestors and Geni.com is, in the main, genealogy, Kindo tackles the issue of mapping and communicating with your living family. Kindo covers the “next generation” family tree, with communication features, stats and a family ‘news feed’. Kindo previously won seed funding from Estonia-based Ambient Sound Investments and the ever-present serial seeders The Accelerator Group as well as Stefan Glänzer, first investor in last.fm and executive chairman until the acquisition last year by CBS. It is not unreasonable to surmise that TAG group, which seed invested in both Kindo and MyHeritage, helped wrap up a deal, but I wouldn’t read too much into it all. Kindo and MyHeritage were clearly in contact well before Index invested in the latter. Update: Kindo’s own blog sets out more of the detail behind the deal. MyHeritage and Kindo met for lunch in London’s Soho even before Kindo released the first public version: “But there we were: A Swede, a South African and an Israeli, all with very different professional background and life stories, talking about the future of families online from very different perspectives. I didn’t expect this, but we found that we had much in common. We shared the same ideas and vision for what we wanted to achieve with our businesses, even though our approach was far from similar.” They were impressed by MyHeritage’s tech: “As Gareth and I travelled back on the tube, we talked about how nice it would be to be able to offer our own users the same tools as MyHeritage already had. What really got us excited was their SmartMatching Technology, which matches people in your family tree with 250 Million other names, and suggests who you might be related too. We liked that. We were also jealous of Gilad, since he got to develop features for 25 million registered users - slightly bigger than our own user base…” CrunchBase Information Kindo Network MyHeritage Geni Information provided by CrunchBase
-
Kindo joins the MyHeritage Family
http://the-accelerator.blogspot.com/2008/09/kindo-joins-myhe...Kindo joins the MyHeritage Family The acquisition of Kindo by MyHeritage was completed yesterday. Congratulations to Nils, Gareth, Mario and the Kindo team. Clearly their technology was some way off that of MyHeritage but what they achieved in creating a brand with real personality in 11 languages with very little cash was truly impressive. Their grass roots marketing using local 'community managers' demonstrated just how rapidly a viral service can grow without any PPC marketing. Combining the social features of Kindo and The MyHeritage technology and enormous user base takes the combined business closer to its vision for building the 'Facebook for the Family'. Related articles by ZemantaMyHeritage acquires Kindo, growing its own family treeKindo Finds a New HomeMyHeritage Buying UK Family Tree Site KindoMyHeritage raises $15 million from Index and Acceland Everyone Says She Looks Like JuliaFamily Tree Wars Continue: MyHeritage Raises Big Round, Shows Impressive GrowthFamily Tree Site MyHeritage Gets $15 Million Second RoundMyHeritage Saves You Tag Time With Image-Based Facial RecognitionHellotree! A Growing Family Network [IMG Reblog this post [with Zemanta]] Posted by Robin Klein
-
[fr] Kindo, le clone de Geni, avalé par MyHeritage.com
http://fr.techcrunch.com/2008/09/22/fr-kindo-le-clone-de-gen...MyHeritage, le site de généalogie qui a récemment levé plus de 15 millions de dollars avec Accel et Index Ventures annoncera aujourd’hui l’acquisition de Kindo, un service basé en Angleterre mais disponible en 11 langues qui permet de créer, comme Geni.com, son arbre généalogique très simplement. Le montant de la transaction n’a pas été communiqué mais on peut imaginer que ces fonds levés ont en partie servi à financer cette acquisition. Au regard des chiffres (fournis par Google trends), Kindo n’a jamais réellement réussi à décoller en termes d’utilisateurs en le comparant à ces concurrents directs, européens ou non. MyHeritage ayant déjà une forte base d’utilisateurs on peut supposer que cette acquisition est motivée par la volonté d’une extension géographique et l’intégration d’une équipe sur place mais aussi d’un produit qui à mon sens est mieux fait que celui de l’acquéreur. Kindo a été financé par TAG et Ambiant sounds investments Kindo dispose d’une version française et pilotée parSophiane Arras Mise à jour: Cela ne m’a pas traversé l’esprit au moment où j’écrivais ce billet mais Saul Klein est aussi bien investisseur dans Kindo via TAG que dans MyHeritage via Index Ventures. Il a du bien évidemment joué un rôle clé dans cette opération. Si vous ajoutez à cela le fait qu’il a également été chez Skype vous comprendrez que le web est en fait une grande famille, ce qui dans le présent cas (sans jeu de mot) est plutôt de bonne augure CrunchBase Information Kindo Network MyHeritage Geni Information provided by CrunchBase Promo: CrunchBoard France: Il serait temps de trouver un nouveau job, non?
-
MyHeritage Raises $15 Million
http://oybuzz.com/blog/?p=155TECH CRUNCH — Sep 6 — MyHeritage, a “family tree” social network, has raised a new round of funding - $15m in a Series D round led by Index Ventures and joined by current investor Accel Partners. That brings their total capital raised to $24m. The site has grown from 180m profiles a year ago to 260m today, they say. Registered users have also grown, from 17m to 25m. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH
-
links for 2008-09-07
http://www.docnotes.net/002744.htmlFamily Tree Wars - how far from a PHR and genomics? It's been just a few days after our post on Geni's big growth numbers - and now big news from Israeli competitor MyHeritage. ... Private RSS Feeds: Support for security in aggregators - silverorange labs We’ve been experimenting with security options for RSS feeds for our intranet product. However, we found that there weren’t many resources or guidelines for how encryption or authentification should be handled (either in feeds or in readers/aggregators).
More rising blog posts
Recent posts from TechCrunch
-
TechMeme Gives Up On Fully Automated News
1 day ago -
OnceUponAWin Adds Some Nostalgia To The Lolcats Network
1 day ago -
This Week on CrunchBoard
1 day ago
