New chapter for genealogy website

by Catherine Woods - Monday, 29th September 2008 -

Online genealogy website Kindo has been sold to competitor MyHeritage less than a year after it was established.

Co-founder Nils Hammar says Kindo had been informally speaking to MyHeritage about the future of social networking for families for a number of months. “Even though we were competitors, we realised we were thinking along the same lines,” he says. “We also realised that what we were doing and what we were good at were complementary for them.”

The entire Kindo team has been moved over to MyHeritage and Hammar has been appointed head of marketing and business development for the combined group. The Kindo site has been closed to new users but existing users are still able to access their account. Financial terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed.

Hammar says it was never the intention to sell up so quickly, adding: “I don’t see this as an exit; I see this as another chapter for everyone in Kindo.

"The opportunity for us as a combined organisation is bigger than it was for Kindo on its own. MyHeritage recently announced it had secured $15m from Index Ventures, an investor in Skype and Facebook, and the site has 25 million users. It’s a completely different scale compared to what we had.”

Hammar remains convinced of the potential for a website that keeps families connected: “Facebook is a very good social network for friends and LinkedIn is a very good network for colleagues but there is nothing useful and powerful for the family yet. Frankly there’s a huge opportunity.”

Picture source

WHAT NEXT?
Sign up for our newsletter and get our weekly pick of business news in your inbox!
Subscribe to our magazine for in depth interviews and advice from leading entrepreneurs!
Join our forum and talk business with other entrepreneurs!