TGN CEO promises to open Ancestry.com to developers

Ian Lamont — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 07:41:26 -0700

The CEO of the company that owns genealogy site Ancestry.com has pledged to open up the platform to outside developers.

In an interview with The Industry Standard yesterday, The Generations Network CEO Tim Sullivan said Ancestry.com was committed to opening up the platform, which has been developed over the last 10 years. "We will absolutely open up our platform," Sullivan said. "It's on our roadmap."

However, Sullivan added that that it was unlikely to happen in the next six months, owing to other unspecified priorities for the company. He also did not describe what opening up Ancestry.com would entail, or how long it would take.

Ancestry.com is a popular website for people interested in researching and building their family trees. It allows users to upload and share family tree data using the industry standard GEDCOM file format. For an additional monthly fee, users can access national census forms from the 18th, 19th, and early 20th century, as well as ships' passenger lists and other records of interest to genealogists. Sullivan says the service currently has about 890,000 paid subscribers and receives 750 million page views per month.

The Generations Network includes Ancestry.com, Genealogy.com, and genealogy research websites for England, Canada, Germany, France, and other countries. The Generations Network also owns and develops Family Tree Maker software for the PC. Sullivan says the company had $166 million in revenue last year.

Image source: Ancestry.com

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