Gene Notes

Some random and some not-so-random thoughts on family history.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Sometimes No News is Good News.

Ancestry announced that it is going to make the 1940 census available to everybody for free from April 2012 until the end of 2013. Gee that is great for non-subscribers, but what will it mean to the paying user? Actually, unless you know the enumeration district where your people resided in 1940, it will mean a lot of work. You may remember when the 1930 census came out and you had to use a map to find the E.D. It's hard to remember how slow my internet connection was in 2002. I think I was still using dial-up.

Then in Other news, Ancestry announced the name change of Footnote.com to fold3! It looks like the former Footnote will be concentrating on military records.

I don't really care about the changes, but it would be nice to actually hear firsthand from Ancestry about their changes since I am a paying user. And to me the fold3 crap (excuse me) came out of left field.

At least it gave me blog fodder!

Copyright 2011, ACK for Gene Notes

4 comments:

  1. That announcement came as a surprise to me too. I started reading about "fold3" ???? Since I have a subscription it would have been nice to a few nanosecond head up on that one.

    I think Ancestry "Free" offer is a ploy to subscribe others who now do not have access to the previous census.

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  2. I didn't see any announcement about Footnote changing. From Footnote or Ancestry.

    And I know both of them have my email address.

    I just tried to go there on my old bookmark.

    The silver lining for me is that this makes it much easier for me to decide how to spend my genealogy website subscription budget...

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  3. I only saw on Facebook and Geneabloggers.

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  4. I'm really surprised Ancestry/Footnote didn't send out a message to paying subscribers about the changes. It was a chance to answer a lot of questions that users had about non-military records and features already on the site. Opportunity lost.

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