General Chat

You may have heard in the press that ITV have sold FriendsReunited to brightsolid for £25 million. What may not be so obvious is that GenesReunited is a sister site to FriendsReunited and is therefore part and parcel of the sale of the ‘group’.

The other interesting fact is that brightsolid already own findmypast.com.

The following is taken from the press release on GenesReunited.

“The acquisition of Friends Reunited Group would create Britain's leading genealogy business by bringing together Genes Reunited and findmypast.com (which operate the official 1901 and 1911 Census websites respectively in association with The National Archives) and ScotlandsPeople in partnership with General Register Office for Scotland, the National Archives of Scotland and the Court of the Lord Lyon.”

Will the two sites merge I wonder? I’m already a member of both myself…

Mark.

They may not merge but I bet the fees will increase!!

A little bit more info from The Times today

"Brightsolid … said that it was buying Friends Reunited only to get its hands on Genes Reunited, the sister site that deals with family histories. Chris van der Kuyl, chief executive of Brightsolid, said: “We know Genes Reunited very well. The fact that we could grab it excited us.”

Another source was more explicit. “We’ve paid the money for Genes Reunited. The value put on Friends Reunited was nominal.” "

Mark.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article6742168.ece

I am guessing they may want the 1901 census which Genes bought back in 2005.Probable cheaper than completing their own.

http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/genesreunited.asp?wci=grstatic&type=PressReleases_brightsolid

The new owners plan to combine FindMyPast with Genes Reunited, a Friends’ subsidiary, and create one of the biggest genealogy sites in the country. The other bidder was U.S. company Ancestry.com (which just filed for its own IPO) for its UK sites Ancestry.co.uk.

And a bit more from the official FindMyPast blog

http://blog.findmypast.com/2009/08/brightsolid-acquires-friends-reunited-group/

"... We’re really excited by this development. In the future there will be opportunities for us to provide enhanced services for the customers of findmypast.com, 1911census.co.uk and the Friends Reunited websites.

For now the websites will continue to be run independently so if you have any queries regarding accounts on Genes Reunited or Friends Reunited, please contact their Customer Support Teams as usual."

Note the 'for now'...

Mark.

Ohh........this is all most interesting .

I wonder if we will become " Find my Genes " or " Past Re-United " .

http://blog.1911census.co.uk/

brightsolid acquires Friends Reunited Group
August 7th, 2009
You may have read in the news yesterday that 1911census.co.uk’s parent company, brightsolid, has bought Friends Reunited Group, which includes the Friends Reunited and Genes Reunited websites. We’re delighted to confirm that this is true.
We’re really excited by this development. In the future there will be opportunities for us to provide enhanced services for the customers of 1911census.co.uk, findmypast.com, and the Friends Reunited websites.
For now, the websites will continue to be run independently, so if you have any queries regarding accounts on Genes Reunited or Friends Reunited, please contact their Customer Support Teams as usual.

oooh, this is quite exciting!

I was not too impressed when I found that they had taken over Scotlands people.
My life is already full of confusion FGS...
Deanna X

I wonder if there will be a reduced all-in-one membership fee for GR, FMP and Scotland's People. Now that's something I'd consider signing up to!

And I've just renewed as well!!
Typical timing on my part

Liz

If, like me you have been less than impressed with the standard of the 1911 census - this could explain why-

Brightsolid recently sent 25 staff into the National Archives in Kew, West London, to "unbind, scan and rebind the 1911 census, which occupied 2.5km of shelf space". It then employed about 300 people in the Philippines to transcribe the records into a searchable database. daily telegraph 07 Aug 2009

It was obvious that the transcriptions had been done overseas, just a case of establishing where.

However, unlike Freebmd and Ancestry, I don't think that there is a mechanism for submitting corrections to 1911?

http://www.1911census.co.uk/content/default.aspx?r=24&133

Users of 1911census.co.uk can also report transcription errors to us. Each report is reviewed by the transcription team and if the change is approved, the change is incorporated into the search results, usually within a month (when the next data upload is made to the website).

Our policy is to only accept changes if they match the entry on the original page, and we are unable to make changes based on information supplied to us from a different source.