WARSAW, Poland & LONDON, UK & TEL AVIV, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MyHeritage.com, the most popular family network on the web, announced today the acquisition of Bliscy.pl from Wirtualna Polska S.A., strengthening its leadership in the family history market in Poland and expanding its international community of users.
The move follows the company’s acquisition of several other leading family networks in 2010, including Polish site MoiKrewni.pl and its parent network OSN GmbH. Merging Bliscy.pl with MyHeritage.pl, the Polish website of MyHeritage.com, unites Poland’s competing family history sites.
The merger adds more than half a million Bliscy.pl users to the global MyHeritage.com family network, resulting in a user base of more than 2.6 million Polish users. MyHeritage.com has become the trusted home on the web for millions of families around the world, enabling them to explore their family history, share photos and to keep in touch - all in a private and secure online environment.
“Having established ourselves as the leading international destination for families to connect to their past and to one another – acquiring Bliscy.pl is a natural step that enriches our global family network" said Gilad Japhet, founder and CEO of MyHeritage.com. "Our service and flagship Smart Matching™ technology enjoy a network effect, providing more value as more people use them. For this reason, this acquisition delivers great value both to the Bliscy.pl users and to the users of MyHeritage.com. Our international network of users consists of millions of families with roots in Poland, who will now find it even easier to connect to long-lost relatives and discover more about their unique family histories”.
MyHeritage.com holds a formidable international registered member base of more than 56 million and offers its services in 36 languages. As a market of increasing strategic and economic importance, the acquisition reaffirms the company’s foothold in Central Europe. As Europe’s sixth largest economy, Poland is an economic power house within Central Europe, possessing more than 40% of 500 of the region’s largest companies measured by turnover1. Since the end of the communist era in 1989, Poland has demonstrated significant development potential – with a high-income economy2 and ranking amongst the highest GDP growth rates in the EU.
Following massive migration, the number of ethnic Poles living abroad is estimated to be some 20 million, with the largest concentrations of 10 million and 1.6 million living in the USA and Germany respectively3, countries where MyHeritage.com enjoys a mass-market following.
The family tree data, including more than 6.5 million family tree profiles created by more than 500k Bliscy.pl users, will be moved onto private family sites on MyHeritage.com in July 2011, subject to user approval.
The acquisition of Bliscy.pl marks the third major acquisition by MyHeritage.com within the last 18 months, following the acquisition of European family network OSN GmbH and its network of 10 market-leading family sites including verwandt.de, moikrewni.pl and verwant.nl, and Dutch Family Network ZOOOF. By merging the family networks into one international platform, MyHeritage.com is building a worldwide Family Graph that has grown to more than 18 million family trees and 760 million profiles.
MyHeritage.com offers a powerful suite of tools and technologies for managing family connections online, including:
- Popular free genealogy software called Family Tree Builder, available also in Polish.
- Smart Matching™ technology that discovers matches between family trees across different languages, pronunciations and spellings.
- Advanced facial recognition technology for automatic tagging of family photos.
“The sale of Bliscy.pl is a continuation of our strategy to focus on expanding content, a key company goal for 2011”, said Anna Kesicka, Director of Business Development at Wirtualna Polska. “We place high value on cooperating with companies who are an ideal fit from a strategic business perspective. As the world’s largest family network, MyHeritage.com fits the bill, providing Bliscy.pl users with vast international platform for exploring family connections and a feature rich site to help users keep in touch with their family in Poland and around the globe.”
About MyHeritage.com:
MyHeritage.com is the most popular family network on the web. Millions of families around the world enjoy having a private place for their families to keep in touch and to showcase their roots. MyHeritage.com’s Smart Matching™ technology empowers users with an exciting and innovative way to find relatives and explore their family history. With all family information stored in a secure site, MyHeritage.com is the ideal place to share family photos, and celebrate and preserve special family moments. www.myheritage.com
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland
3 http://culture.polishsite.us/articles/art79fr.htm
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