MyHeritage -- Snaps Up Geni.com

I do not receive this email too... :S
Why don't we have the "Smart Matches" offered on MyHeritage ?

Private User I know you've been in contact with Customer Service so I'll let you continue your discussion with them.

Private User our records indicate that the email was sent to you -- maybe check your spam folder?

Enrique: IANAL = I am not a lawyer.

Hi, Im also a lifetime member. I bought this membership in february 2012. I did this because when geni was for free i did an enormous job with my family tree and even once i bought a 1 year membership, but then i realized that if i dont want to lose all my many years of work and want to continue with my research, then its wise to buy a lifetime membership. It was a huge amount of money for me, but after a long though, i still bought it...hoping that now i can do my work without worries of losing it all...and now im really disappointed that they have cut it to 5 years...and i still have to decide whats goin to happen after that...so...im very disappointed in Geni and how they treat the people who have put so much time and money into their website..
Kadri from Estonia

On the previous page at http://www.geni.com/discussions/115406?msg=836506 Andrew de Naray linked to my suggested definition of lifetime membership at http://help.geni.com/entries/20460143-what-is-the-definition-of-lif...

I don't think anyone should rely on my suggested definition on its own. I think you would do better to rely on the statement of Geni.com at http://help.geni.com/entries/20470967-what-is-the-definition-of-lif... by Amanda of Geni where she wrote: David Prins had previously provided an apt description of a lifetime subscription. Generally, a lifetime membership means your subscription will last as long as your lifetime or the lifetime of a site, depending on which happens first. There is no set expiration date for a lifetime subscription.

September 26, 2011 16:11

Either way, I think to most people a lifetime would be defined as the lifetime of the individual or the establishment that the agreement has been made with. This is really unethical.

I feel really cheated and really dumb.

Agneta Åhrberg I don't think it has anything ot do with Americans. Much of the management of both companies are not born in the US. It seems like it simply wasn't well thought out in advance.

Agreed. I think they were so excited by the buyout they failed to execute an organized and thoughtful transition.

why do we have to privately be good at negotiating a fair deal... obviously some are better at it, and this should remain public rather than this..... ....." While we can no longer honor the lifetime subscriptions we were hoping that our users would be just as happy and excited as us about getting the data subscription. That being said if you are not satisfied then we welcome you to email us at subscriptions@geni.com so we can work with you towards a satisfactory solution" .... being what we have to do.

What are suggestions for "making it right" if the parent company doesn't support the lifetime subscription?

Erica Howton - Here's one way Geni could possibly get around it, if that is really the problem (I have seen nothing from MyHeritage stating it is; nothing from Geni saying they fought hard to have our Lifetime Memberships honored; or etc) -- Geni could have the"automatic renewals" for the 5-year accounts for all of us who had Life Memberships go to Geni's account (ie they pay for them), instead of to us.

I'm not a lifetime member. My understanding is the email came from MyHeritage, not from Geni.

I am "assuming" that MH accounting & business etc. simply does not support lifetime memberships.

So given that, what suggestions are there to be "made whole" in the contract?

I bought my lifetime membership in April/May of 2012. I think they knew a merger was in the works.

I am angry because while Geni/MyHeritage may not want to sell lifetime memberships any more and that is fine, but the current lifetime memberships should be honored.

Have any lifetime members had luck with using the data subscription at MyHeritage. I wanted to check it out, but can't figure it out. How do they know that I'm a lifetime member of Geni and that I should have free access?

The entire deal doesn't sit well with me.

Andrew de Naray - Pro user's benefits:
http://help.geni.com/entries/500909-what-are-the-benefits-of-being-...

NB! Basic users can do matches & merges only inside his/her tree and family group (privates) + profiles managed by his/her collaborators (public ones).

Private User

I think you and I are on the same page, if I'm understanding your previous message. If Geni/MyHeritage literally can't do "lifetime" memberships, I like the automatically renewing 5yr memberships. In essence a bunch of 5 year memberships string together until I am either no longer alive or no longer have the desire to work on my tree.

That is how they can make this right.

Companies are all about money. So why not just make this deal right with lifetime members, save face and sell more memberships to new members. Happy current members bring in new members! Think of all the family and friends each of us would WANT to bring to Geni & MyHeritage IF we were happy with the deal, happy with the 2 sites!?!

Who pays gets the music by which others will dance, it´s as simple as that. When MH bought Geni then MH tells what Geni must do. As i understand this is not an alliance, this is a buy up, because if it were alliance then both parts should have discussed it thoroughly and in-depth and informing at least curators of it step-by-step. As Agneta Åhrberg already said - "Do MyHeritage want to survive?" Geni´s user interface is great and there was some kind of match algorithm integrated to some kind of archives. Sad that it was not so good as MYHeritage´s Smart Match and Record Match Technology. Maybe the Record Match technology is the only value in MH beside the Family Tree Builder program to keep data backup in your on PC or laptop. It seems understandable that MyHeritage wanted to buy up great values of Geni by just giving lots of money to prove that they are the best and now Geni has to play by the rules of MH. If MH wants to improve their supersearch then it should be integrated with Ancestry.com search engine which is far more exact. I wonder if MH will by up Ancestry.com to do that?

Jaak Tulp Ancestry.com is >>4 times too big / too expensive for MyHeritage: http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/25/ancestry-com-acquires-archives-com... (comparing to: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20121128006115/en/MyHeritage-...)

Whole different class of "players" Jaak

http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/22/ancestry-com-agrees-to-1-6-billion...

Erica - FYI for you and others - The e-mail cam from Geni. Subject: "An important announcement about your Geni lifetime subscription" -- From: "Geni" <no-reply@geni.com
Signed: "- The Geni Team"

Nothing from MyHeritage!! No comment indicating Geni had fought hard to allow us to have those with Lifetime grandfathered in. Not even a comment that they asked for it and were turned down.

And share holders think they didn't pay enough ....

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-10-26/ancestry-dot-com-sued-o...

Lois the copy i saw was from MyHeritage.

An aside to those failing to be able to use the new data subscription service -- in my e-mail it said --

"An account has been created for you using your email address" then my e-mail address, then a blue link saying

"Activate your MyHeritage data subscription now" -

I sort of assumed you had to click on that link to get the service. Of folks saying it isn't working - did you try clicking on that link, or ??

Lois

So you want to hear that Geni staff or owners (the previous owners were, I believe, Venture Capital investors) wept blood tears on behalf of Geni subscribers?

Agneta

The corporate legal entity of MyHeritage is not, I believe, located in the USA. I do not know how exactly that works for Geni.com but I imagine that will be posted on their official pages in due course, if it isn't already.

Erica - re: "the copy I saw was from MyHeritage" - the copy of what? Simply some announcement telling that MyHeritage had bought Geni?

OR -
If you have something from MyHeritage telling about Geni Lifetime Memberships - could you copy it here?

There's a number of things I can think of that could cause MyHeritage to want to suspend lifetime membership.
1. A substantial change in membership price
2. Something they discovered in the membership model that could cause them to loose more money in the end.

I want to see the Geni website continue to survive as much as possible and if they need to change the membership's then that's what needs to happen

I think that in the very least, Geni owes each individual Geni Pro lifetime member public acknowledgment for buying into their lifetime subscription only to have the terms changed on us. I think this could come in many forms, a permanent acknowledgment page with the Geni Pro lifetime user's names listed, a special icon next to our profile picture that we can turn on and off etc.

Optimally though I would like it if Geni would allow us to keep our lifetime membership even if that means removing all their graphics from the pages to conserve bandwidth or building a free offline application that would allow us to access and do the same thing we're doing now on our computers and not entirely on their server.

As for the extra functionality on MyHeritage that Geni Pro lifetime members are getting... It's nice but that's not what we purchased and I think if we wanted that instead then we would all have accounts on MyHeritage long before the Geni MyHeritage merge occurred.

OK, i see, that MH buying Ancestry.com was just an example to make my point. I didn´t know the sizes of each company.

Jeremiah I like the way you're thinking.

"I want to see the Geni website continue to survive as much as possible and if they need to change the membership's then that's what needs to happen."

I was just thinking about why I would have bought Lifetime - which I should have done, it was a great deal.

But it would have been because I was investing in a superior product & service, superior because

1) the technology
2) the look and feel
3) the wonderful, committed, passionate genealogist / technologists who made this happen & continue to
4) the community who share their research, most of all

Lois no I didn't get an offer myself so I take your word that it came from a Geni email address.