MyFamily.com Now Called The Generations Network
Can you transform a regular company into a web 2.0 company successfully? MyFamily.com is going to try. They are changing their name to The Generations Network. This encompasses all of their sites: MyFamily.com, Ancestry.com, etc.
The Generations Network doesn’t quite make me think of family history, searching for ancestors, connecting with relatives quite like MyFamily.com did. I worked there for a year or so several years ago. We had a normal company mentality. I’ll have to watch to see how this evolves. If they can pull it off it could be amazing. I can imagine the potential of a true web 2.0 experience for geneologists or for families.
I’m surprised my friend Brad broke this (at least the first I saw). Paul Allen must be busy today! This needs to be dugg. I don’t have time (I’m working on migrating my blog to my own domain and putting in social networking pieces to make this easier).
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4 Responses to “MyFamily.com Now Called The Generations Network”
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May 4th, 2007 at 9:35 am
This is from my older blog and I thought that it should be repeated here. I should add my correction that Paul Allen, as far as I know is no longer a key figure in the company.
Janet
Paul Allen is a key figure and co-founder of MyFamily.com.
CMGI’s @Ventures invests in early to mid stage internet start-ups and has invested in MyFamily.com at least twice. Lately @Ventures has been investing in clean/renewable energy start-ups as well.
If you look at the history of CMGI (NASDAQ listed), you will notice that current changes at MyFamily.com essentially lead to the sale of the company, either privately or through an IPO. Once a potential buyer has been identified, CMGI will tweak the company to fit exactly what the purchaser is looking for.
Analyzing the changes narrows down the field of potential buyers quit a bit.
Approximately $90M of private capital has been sunk into MyFamily.com to date. Any sale of the company should be north of $200M. In order to obtain a higher sales price, revenue growth must exceed 20% YOY (year over year). Earnings do not necessarily need to keep pace. This is the driving force behind the changes.
Another possible avenue is that MyFamily.com will be spun-off in an IPO. Here the more recent investors, Sorenson Media and Canopy Group, have aligned interests.
Disclosure: Opinion of a CrossProfit analyst and may not represent the opinion of CrossProfit.com.
http://www.crossprofit.com
May 4th, 2007 at 9:54 am
[...] I recently got a comment on my post about MyFamily.com on the other blog that is worth noting. Check it out in the comment section. [...]
May 4th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Very interesting. My brother-in-law is a senior associate at Sorenson. I’ll have to ask him about what he’s able to divulge (I doubt much until the deal comes through). I’ve got a genealogy site idea that will blow the current ancestry.com out of the water - it will be interesting to see what comes of this change and how it will affect my idea.
June 3rd, 2007 at 6:25 am
Jesse Stay, just wondering if you’ve discovered anything about the MyFamily.com (The Generations Network)’s deal that you can share publicly…