Gariwala: MyHeritage.com Acquires Family Tree Backup Service ...

Posted by Robin Wauters on September 20th, 2011

MyHeritage.com, a relatively heavily-funded Israeli startup operating a huge family-based social network, this morning announced that it has acquired BackupMyTree, which enables people to automatically backup their family history for free.

This is the sixth acquisition by MyHeritage.com ? recent purchases include Germany?s OSN , Poland?s Bliscy.pl and Dutch Family Network ZOOOF.

One year after launching, BackupMyTree?s backup service is said to protect over 9 TB of family tree data off-site, uploaded by genealogists and family history enthusiasts.

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but don?t expect this to be a huge deal: the BackupMyTree team is promptly moving on to a new venture dubbed Mocavo, a free genealogy search engine.

Coincidentally, BackupMyTree is the second company that MyHeritage.com has purchased from entrepreneur Cliff Shaw, having acquired Pearl Street Software, makers of GenCircles.com and Family Tree Legends, back in 2007.

MyHeritage.com, which boasts an international registered member base of 60 million users and offers its services in 38 languages, says it will continue to maintain the service and keep it free. The company says its is now home to more than 800 million profiles and 20 million family trees.

MyHeritage.com is backed by Index Ventures and Accel Partners.

MyHeritage.com is a family social network. The site offers a private home on the web for exploring family history and keeping in touch. It allows users to create their own family website, share pictures and videos, organize family events, create family trees and discover ancestors and long-lost relatives.

The MyHeritage system contained 58 million members and more than 792 million online profiles as of August 2011. There are also more than 19 million family trees and 120 million photos?

Learn more