Ancestry has lobbed the equivalent of a large boulder into the proverbial genealogical pond in the last week by announcing the planned demise of their desktop software package, Family Tree Maker. See for yourself what "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells/Milwaukee (delete as appropriate)" make of the whole sorry business on Ancestry's blog post. There have been plenty of other reactions posted by other genealogical bloggers too - Chris Paton being keen to point out that the world has not ended and Family Historian is a much better package anyway! In fact, it hasn't taken long for other software and service providers to offer large discounts to disgruntled FTM users to switch to their products and services, including Family Historian, RootsMagic and MyHeritage, although some of these offers may only be available to US customers?
Ancestry claim that the market for products like FTM is declining and that people are preferring to store their family trees on-line. Well, they would say that wouldn't they as that's exactly what their current business models feeds off ... the more of us who upload our precious data to their servers, the more Ancestry can promote suggested links for us to follow up, including all the glaring mistakes and wild guesses that proliferate there too. As to the declining market, is that really true - has anyone seen any supporting data? Maybe it's got more to do with the fact that we all tend to buy whichever product we like only once and may not bother with upgrades unless we have to - I didn't upgrade to the latest version of FTM because I thought TreeSync was such a wonderful feature (I think you can guess I don't use it!) but because I'd finally got to the hair-pulling-out stage over GEDCOM files that failed to generate and thought an upgrade would fix this (it did ... but it looks like some of the charting functionality is starting to misbehave now *sigh*.)
I know a lot of people like the flexibility of having their family tree available anywhere with an internet connection and this can be a godsend when you find yourself deep in the weeds at an archive trying to remember if Great Uncle Cyril married an Agatha or was it an Amelia? However, there are still plenty of places where t'internet is a mere myth. Then what will you do? Personally I invested in a small notebook style laptop a few years ago and keep this updated with my latest family tree for reference and use this when I'm out and about. If I make any changes then I just copy back the new FTM file to my home PC.
I'll probably still keep my Ancestry subscription - their record sets are pretty extensive and they offer much better original source information than Find My Past. But what about the leaf hints feature - there's nothing on the Ancestry follow-up blog response to the 8000+ complaints that says whether these will carry on working?
However, I think that there is a lesson for us all here that we ought to pause and think about. Don't expect Ancestry to change their mind in the face of the considerable invective generated so far - they are in the business of making money and keeping shareholders happy and will have calculated the net effect ($$$) of pissing off a proportion of their customer base. Instead, think about your family history treasure trove and how you will preserve it for future generations to benefit from. Computer hardware and software are always evolving - remember floppy discs?! And that program or that tower PC are going to stop working on you one day. Eventually whatever electronic medium we think will serve us will let us down.
So, personally, I'm not necessarily going to rush out and buy another package and begin the monumental task of moving all my research over, but instead I'm going to make a plan for 2016 to do what I always wanted it all to become - write the book! Seriously, in the race to become ever more efficient data junkies, maybe we are losing the plot about what it's all in aid of.
Tell your family story in a narrative that others to come will understand and enjoy so much more than trying to piece together all the disseminated information that you have had to shove kicking and screaming into separate database fields. Create that new family heirloom - books are beautiful!
Ancestry claim that the market for products like FTM is declining and that people are preferring to store their family trees on-line. Well, they would say that wouldn't they as that's exactly what their current business models feeds off ... the more of us who upload our precious data to their servers, the more Ancestry can promote suggested links for us to follow up, including all the glaring mistakes and wild guesses that proliferate there too. As to the declining market, is that really true - has anyone seen any supporting data? Maybe it's got more to do with the fact that we all tend to buy whichever product we like only once and may not bother with upgrades unless we have to - I didn't upgrade to the latest version of FTM because I thought TreeSync was such a wonderful feature (I think you can guess I don't use it!) but because I'd finally got to the hair-pulling-out stage over GEDCOM files that failed to generate and thought an upgrade would fix this (it did ... but it looks like some of the charting functionality is starting to misbehave now *sigh*.)
I know a lot of people like the flexibility of having their family tree available anywhere with an internet connection and this can be a godsend when you find yourself deep in the weeds at an archive trying to remember if Great Uncle Cyril married an Agatha or was it an Amelia? However, there are still plenty of places where t'internet is a mere myth. Then what will you do? Personally I invested in a small notebook style laptop a few years ago and keep this updated with my latest family tree for reference and use this when I'm out and about. If I make any changes then I just copy back the new FTM file to my home PC.
I'll probably still keep my Ancestry subscription - their record sets are pretty extensive and they offer much better original source information than Find My Past. But what about the leaf hints feature - there's nothing on the Ancestry follow-up blog response to the 8000+ complaints that says whether these will carry on working?
However, I think that there is a lesson for us all here that we ought to pause and think about. Don't expect Ancestry to change their mind in the face of the considerable invective generated so far - they are in the business of making money and keeping shareholders happy and will have calculated the net effect ($$$) of pissing off a proportion of their customer base. Instead, think about your family history treasure trove and how you will preserve it for future generations to benefit from. Computer hardware and software are always evolving - remember floppy discs?! And that program or that tower PC are going to stop working on you one day. Eventually whatever electronic medium we think will serve us will let us down.
So, personally, I'm not necessarily going to rush out and buy another package and begin the monumental task of moving all my research over, but instead I'm going to make a plan for 2016 to do what I always wanted it all to become - write the book! Seriously, in the race to become ever more efficient data junkies, maybe we are losing the plot about what it's all in aid of.
Tell your family story in a narrative that others to come will understand and enjoy so much more than trying to piece together all the disseminated information that you have had to shove kicking and screaming into separate database fields. Create that new family heirloom - books are beautiful!