Ancestry - A Day Late...

Post date: Dec 10, 2015 8:08:19 PM

Following the many thousands of negative comments and complaints by Ancestry's customers in response to Tuesday's announcement that Ancestry intents to "retire" its Family Tree Maker software (the "The #1–selling family history software" according to Ancestry), Kendall Hulet attempted to "re-assure" (I'm not sure why he made this a hyphenate, especially given the lack of any previous assurance) customers that Ancestry is "exploring":

• "possible relationships with other desktop software solutions that would make it possible for their products to integrate with Ancestry"; and
• "options to bring more reports and related functionality from Family Tree Maker into the online service.

This day late and a dollar short response to Ancestry's customer's reactions leaves one wondering why this information had not been included in the original announcement. If the assurances made in this new announcement had, in fact, been Ancestry's plan from the beginning, then perhaps Ancestry does not understand certain fundamental facts.

1. It is easy to make a customer irate;
2. It is easier to keep a customer happy that it is to make an irate customer happy.

More importantly, it brings into question Kendall's competence in Product Management.

Before an organization makes a decision to sunset a product line, it should already have a well-defined migration path for that product's customers. Until such a migration path is clearly defined, not only should such a decision not be made, but no announcement should be made about such a decision. Once the migration path is clear, and the decision has been made, an explanation of that path should be included in the announcement. I say this based on my own successful and extensive business management and product management experience.

It seems a little backward to make the decision and the announcement while still exploring options for keeping Ancestry's customers happy, and for providing a migration path for the features and values of the product and its customers.

Kendall Hulet is the newly appointed SVP of Product Management at Ancestry. He appears to be the individual responsible for the decision and for the poorly handled announcement.

Some of the FAQs provided to assure Ancestry's customers appear to be a bit lacking, possibly misleading, and potentially disingenuous.

Yes, the tree that you have created using the Family Tree Maker (FTM) software will continue to be accessible on the software after 2016, however, you will likely not be able to easily incorporate valuable evidence into your tree such as census data, draft registrations, naturalizations, etc., from Ancestry's website using the "merge" feature in the software. This feather enables users to quickly incorporate into their tree not only links to the underlying record, but also an image of the record itself, allowing for off-line viewing via the FTM software.

To say that "you can always export your tree and save it" does not address the fact that you cannot export your tree with the above attached images/media, nor any other photographs or documents that you have attached to your tree except in native FTM format. This means that only the Family Tree Maker software can be used to read the exported file with this invaluable content. You can export your tree in GEDCOM format, but you will lose all of the attached media that bring the tree to life.

The FAQ also says that "[u]sers can also download and save historical records and media attached to individuals in their family trees", however, to be clear, this DOES NOT MEAN that, after 2016, users will be able to download their tree with the attached media. It only means that users will be able to download their tree in GEDCOM format, and then download the individual media files, one at a time, from the Ancestry website, by separately clicking on each media item attached to each individual in their tree.

Given the extensive comments to Hulet's new post on the subject, it appears that he has not managed to quell his customers' discontent.

See the new announcement and related comments below: