MyHeritage helps unite families worldwide

myHeritage.com

MyHeritage is a different type of social networking site than the common sites that are widely popular. Unlike sites such as Twitter or Facebook MyHeritage is geared toward families. Signing up for the site is easy and free so it is a great way to connect and share with relatives as well as expand your family connections to include distant relatives worldwide.

According to Carl Weber, the U.S. Community Manager, MyHeritage currently has 32 million users worldwide in 62 countries on 6 continents, with 7 million of the users from the U.S. alone. Currently there are 320 million profiles on the site with 500,000 added daily showing the continuing growth of this site.

Getting started

Getting started on MyHeritage is quick and easy. The site offers easy to follow directions to downloading the required toolbar to get started. Each family gets its own web site with its own domain. The free version allows a member to have 250 family members and 250mb of storage for pictures and videos. If you need more space MyHeritage offers inexpensive premium accounts for $4.06 and $9.95 a month. These are billed annually but for the price members can have up to 2,500 family members or for the $9.95 premium plus account unlimited amount of members in the family tree and unlimited storage for pictures and videos. All sites included privacy settings so family members can decide how public or private the family site is.

Once the toolbar is downloaded the member can begin to invite family members to join and there is a search option to find family members through web mail sites, and a few social networking sites or send manual invitations. Family members can also use the toolbar to chat, check the family calendar for upcoming birthdays or events, share news, perform genealogy and web searches, and allows one click access to the most useful family pages. For family members to chat each family member will need to download the toolbar. The toolbar also allows families to share pictures and events and can be used in 26 languages by using the drop down box to select the language of your choice.

MyHeritage recently upgraded their photo service to make it easier for families to share, organize and present pictures online. According to a recent press release 2.5 million family pictures are uploaded monthly to the site, more than its competitors. With the new photo service pictures can be uploaded from email for any mobile device. "Sharing and presenting digital photos is very important to families all over the world, so we are constantly looking for ways to make this even easier and more fun to use," said Mario Ruckh, Director of Marketing at MyHeritage. Now you can simply attach photos and videos to an email and send them directly to your family site. They are safely stored, easily accessible to your loved ones and don't clog up any email inbox. Best of all, the email upload also works from any mobile device. Everybody in the family knows how to use email."

As well as easy uploading and sharing of photos, MyHeritage has developed a new interface with new face recognition technology. Identify each person once and all photos uploaded will be automatically identified and tagged so it saves time from having to tag each person individually. Photos are also organized based on who appears in them for easier viewing. Regardless of the distance families can now capture family events as they happen and automatically share them.

MyHeritage is one of leading online family networks that uses innovative technology and user friendly tools to allow families worldwide to communicate, share, and plan family reunions within one site quickly and easily.

For more info: myHeritage press release

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