Ancestry.com has announced on their blog that they have acquired 1000memories, Inc., makers of the ShoeBox app. The entire 1000memories team will join Ancestry.com. Another announcement states that there will be a new version of ShoeBox for iOS that connects to Ancestry.com.
One of the most popular names in genealogy is Ancestry.com. People who have absolutely no interest whatsoever in genealogy will still recognize the name, (mostly due to their connection to the “Who Do You Think You Are?” television show). Ancestry.com has been in the news lately regarding the potential sale of the company.
1000memories Inc., is the company that makes the popular ShoeBox app. You can also get a free account at the 1000memories website and start storing your family photos on it. You can upload the photos from your computer, and create digital albums of them. The digital albums are called “ShoeBoxes”. At first glance, 1000memories looks like a Pinterest for family historians!
Just a few months ago, in August of 2012, 1000memories had partnered with MyHeritage, a completely separate genealogy website. I went looking for the post on the MyHeritage blog about this partnership, only to find the information has been taken down. In August, genealogists could use the ShoeBox app to upload family photos to the MyHeritage account. I have no idea if that is still possible now.
The Ancestry.com blog has a post called “Ancestry.com Acquires 1000memories”. It was posted on October 3, 2012. The blog states that Ancestry.com is “really pleased to have them join the team”. The Ancestry.com blog also says:
“One of the pieces of technology they bring to Ancestry is their popular ShoeBox mobile app. ShoeBox turns your mobile phone into a photo scanner, providing an easy way to digitize paper photos and share them online or on your mobile device”.
Another blog post on the 1000memories website says “Our entire team will be joining Ancestry.com’s San Francisco office today to continue working on 1000memories website, the ShoeBox app, and more beautiful tools to advance the shared mission of helping people to discover, preserve, and share stories from the past.”
Paired with the announcement that Ancestry.com has acquired 1000memories is another interesting piece of news. There will be a new version of the ShoeBox app for iPhone. It will allow Ancestry.com members to post photos directly to their Ancestry trees.
Image by Sean MacEntee on Flickr