Issue 51.15
Kendall Hulet, the Senior Vice President of Product Management at Ancestry.com announced on December 8, 2015 that Ancestry was going to retire their Family Tree Maker Software. Family Tree Maker, or FTM has been a popular software product and they have a lot of customers upset about the decision. It reminds me of when FamilySearch decided to focus on their online family tree and not spend the money to update Personal Ancestral File, or PAF anymore.
It happens, and life goes on. There are many available software products out there and in recent articles I did talk about the importance of having your own pure copy of your genealogy records, so I believe you are better off with a software program on your own computer. https://familysearch.org/apps/ has a whole selection of products.
Here is what Mr. Hulet said: Ancestry is proud to have made a significant investment this year to bring valuable new content and records to the Ancestry site. In 2015, we’ve made 220 million searchable historical records from Mexico available; more than 170 million pages from the largest collection of U.S. will and probate records, among others. We’ve also introduced new features such as Ancestry Academy and major advancements for AncestryDNA. We remain dedicated to helping people gain new levels of understanding about their lives, and who and what led to them, harnessing the information found in family trees, historical records and genetics. As a company, we’re also continually evaluating ways to focus our efforts to provide the most impact and best product experience for our users through our core offerings. True to this focus, we’ve taken a hard look at the declining desktop software market and the impact this has on being able to continue to provide product enhancements and support that our users need. With that, we’ve made the decision to stop selling Family Tree Maker as of December 31, 2015. Our subscription business and website, on the other hand, continue to grow and we are doubling down our efforts to make that experience even better for our Ancestry community. Ancestry will continue to support current owners of Family Tree Maker at least through January 1, 2017. During this time, all features of the software, including TreeSync™, will continue to work, and Member Services will be available to assist with user questions. We will also address major software bugs that may occur, as well as compatibility updates. These changes are never easy, but by focusing our efforts, we can concentrate on continuing to build great products for our loyal Ancestry community.
For more information, contact Shanna Jones at shannasjones@msn.com