Genealogists have downloaded the Mobile app from Ancestry.com more than one million times now. This is clearly a very popular and useful app for genealogists to have. Let’s take a closer look at what makes this little app so attractive to genealogists.
Ancestry.com recently announced that about one third of the more than one million downloads have happened in the past two months. Another interesting fact is that more than half of the people who downloaded the app are new to Ancestry.com. The company feels that their iPhone and iPad app are a natural extension of the current service that members get from Ancestry.com. It seems to me that if you are currently a member of Ancestry.com, and really pleased with all that it has to offer a genealogist, then of course you will want to check out the Mobile app.
Another nice thing about the Mobile app is that it is absolutely free to download. Who doesn’t love getting something for free? It is easily available through iTunes. You can run this app on the iPad, the iPhone, and the iPod Touch, which is rather convenient for people who use any one of those three devices.
If you already were a member of Ancestry.com, then you can start using the Mobile app right away. If not, then you need to create a new account at Ancestry.com in order to be able to use the Mobile app at all. I would guess that most genealogists who were interested in downloading the Ancestry.com Mobile app wanted it either because they are already members of Ancestry.com, or because they are interested in becoming a member.
Perhaps the most attractive thing about the Mobile app is what you can do with it. It’s very convenient. When a genealogist is working on research at a cemetery, or in a physical archive, the genealogist is going to have to either write down the information he or she finds, take a photo of it, or find some other way to make a copy.
The Mobile app allows the genealogist to enter that information directly into his or her existing family tree at Ancestry.com. It is done in real time, so you won’t have to wait very long at all to make that new information “stick”. You can add photos and videos in this way. The Mobile app, as the name would imply, gives genealogists the ability to work on their genealogy research, and their family tree, without having to sit in front of their home computer.
Image by Yutaka Tsutano on Flickr