Hugh Watkins in his new genealogy blog linked to a post by Steve Johnson at http://www.inyourweb.com/2007/05/its-simple-things-stupid.htm about Ancestry marketing strategies.
Steve started the Free on Ancestry web page that was a very useful tool, but he took the site down at Ancestry's "request."
The money quotes from Steve's post include:
"The needs of genealogists are very simple. They want to know if Ancestry.com has records pertinent to their research. No one wants to use Ancestry.com to share GEDCOMs, or build a family tree, or any of that geeky Web 2.0 stuff. All they want is to search records."
"So now, Ancestry.com is in deep doo doo. They're losing money. They spent a lot of money building stuff that they're users are not using. They have competitors, serious competitors, rising up in the ranks. They're focusing on building their brand, while their competitors are focusing on building market share."
Read the whole article. My judgment is that this is not "sour grapes" but a reasonable interpretation of what has happened at Ancestry over the last six months based on the observations and experience of a longtime affiliate. As such, it is illuminating and disappointing.
Steve also has a wonderful web site at www.interment.net that I use all the time to find cemetery listings.
Thanks to Hugh for his post.
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