MyHeritage and BillionGraves team up and launch international App
Groundbreaking multilingual mobile app will power international crowd-sourcing initiative
We are pleased to announce a new collaboration with MyHeritage to digitally preserve the world’s cemeteries.
In this collaboration, MyHeritage calls upon its tens of millions of users along with millions of other family history enthusiasts around the world to work with BillionGraves to digitally preserve cemeteries around the world and capture their GPS locations.
BillionGraves and MyHeritage will work together to make the BillionGraves website and application available in 25 languages. Along with other features, the BillionGraves app and website will also support Gregorian, Hebrew and Julian dates. The addition of these features makes the BillionGraves app the first of its kind to be made available to the entire world.
The BillionGraves content is available for free on MyHeritage SuperSearch. In addition, MyHeritage is matching it for free to its 27 million family trees on MyHeritage and Geni.
Gilad Japhet, Founder and CEO of MyHeritage said
“We’re thrilled to embark on this global initiative with BillionGraves. Gravestones are among the most valuable information sources for family history research, and although there are many thousands of cemeteries worldwide, most of them have never been documented, and their information is not available online. Time is chipping away at the gravestones and many are becoming unreadable over the years so it’s up to our generation to preserve them.”
Hudson Gunn, President of BillionGraves said
“We’re delighted to work with MyHeritage on digitizing the world’s cemeteries. At BillionGraves we are working to provide a comprehensive family history database for records and images from the world’s cemeteries—but it’s not something we can do alone. With MyHeritage’s support in mobilizing its massive user community and working with us to launch in 25 languages, we’ll be able to provide incredible value for millions of families and preserve this valuable data for generations to come.”
For more details about this partnership, read the official press release on Business Wire or visit the MyHeritage Blog.
Disclaimer: BillionGraves has not been acquired by MyHeritage and is still owned and operated by Otter Creek Holdings. BillionGraves has and will continue to remain a FREE resource to all.
MyHeritage and BillionGraves Team Up to Digitally Preserve the World’s Cemeteries
MyHeritage and BillionGraves team up to digitally preserve the world’s cemeteries
Groundbreaking multilingual mobile app will power international crowdsourcing initiative
TEL AVIV, Israel & LEHI & KAYSVILLE, Utah – Wednesday 19 February, 2014
– MyHeritage, the popular online family history network, has partnered with BillionGraves to launch a global crowdsourcing initiative to preserve the world’s cemeteries.
BillionGraves is a free iOS and Android application that lets users easily photograph and document gravestones, providing an important source of information for people intrigued about their ancestors and family history. Using patent-pending technology, BillionGraves is the only mobile application of its kind. With the help of MyHeritage, the app will be available in 25 languages, and will support Gregorian, Hebrew and Julian dates. It records the GPS locations of gravestones to make them easy to find and volunteers can easily see which areas of any cemetery remain undocumented, to maximize efficiency and avoid duplication. The gravestone photographs are then transcribed by volunteers on the BillionGraves website, resulting in searchable digital data.
With a community of tens of millions of family history enthusiasts all around the world, MyHeritage brings a vast global volunteer base for collecting and transcribing gravestone photos using the BillionGraves application.
All records collected are made available for free on the BillionGraves and MyHeritage websites. The partnership with BillionGraves brings major benefits for families using MyHeritage to explore their past, as all users will receive free Record Matches – alerts about gravestone records that have been automatically matched to their ancestors, making it easy to make new discoveries. In addition to the photographs and GPS coordinates of the gravestones, an index of corresponding information, such as dates of birth and death, close family relatives and epitaphs, is made available to search for free on MyHeritage’s search engine for historical records, SuperSearch.
“We’re thrilled to embark on this global initiative with BillionGraves”, said Gilad Japhet, Founder and CEO of MyHeritage. “Gravestones are among the most valuable information sources for family history research, and although there are many thousands of cemeteries worldwide, most of them have never been documented, and their information is not available online. Time is chipping away at the gravestones and many are becoming unreadable over the years, so it’s up to our generation to preserve them.”
“We’re delighted to work with MyHeritage on digitizing the world’s cemeteries”, said Hudson Gunn, President of BillionGraves. “At BillionGraves we are working to provide a comprehensive family history database for records and images from the world’s cemeteries—but it’s not something we can do alone. With MyHeritage’s support in mobilizing its massive user community and working with us to launch in 25 languages, we’ll be able to provide incredible value for millions of families and preserve this valuable data for generations to come.”
Over the coming weeks, MyHeritage users will receive documentation about the project and will be able to download the application via a special website designed for this project.
About MyHeritage
MyHeritage is a family history network helping millions of families around the world discover and share their legacy online. As technology thought leaders and innovators, MyHeritage is transforming family history into an activity that’s more accessible, exciting, and easier than ever before. MyHeritage empowers its global community of users with social crowdsourcing tools, a massive library of historical content, and powerful search and matching technologies. The service is available in 40 languages. For more information, visit www.myheritage.com.
Press Contact
Aaron Godfrey, PR Manager for MyHeritage
Phone: US +1-347-329-5461 | UK +44-208-816-7571
Email: aaron@myheritage.com
About BillionGraves
With more than 7 million headstone records created by 70,000 volunteers in just two years, BillionGraves is the trusted resource for accurate GPS gravestone and burial record data on the web. BillionGraves’ mobile GPS tracking technology in its mobile application perpetuates this progress, bringing a wealth of genealogical information right to your fingertips. For more information, visit www.billiongraves.com
Disclaimer: BillionGraves has not been acquired by MyHeritage and is still owned and operated by Otter Creek Holdings. BillionGraves has been and will continue to be a FREE resource for all.
BillionGraves Partners with MyHeritage
In an effort to provide better content and to make records found on headstones more readily available to genealogists around the world, we are happy to announce that we have partnered with MyHeritage!
This partnership will expand the reach of BillionGraves records to more than 75 million registered users on MyHeritage—an enormous international network of trees and historical records for discovering family history.
MyHeritage is an amazing company backed by amazing technology and a database filled with several billion records! These world-wide record collections include:
- 1.5 billion exclusive family tree records
- Birth, marriage and death records
- Millions of Newspapers, back to 1739
- Vital records from 16 countries
- Military and immigration records
- Census records back to 1790
- And now more than 5.5 million headstone records from BillionGraves.
In addressing this great news, Hudson Gunn—President of BillionGraves—said, “Since day one, our goal has been to document these headstones and make them available to everyone in the world; and today we take a giant step forward in achieving that goal. Partnering with MyHeritage is an important milestone in the exponential growth of BillionGraves, solidifying our position internationally as a key resource to families looking for accurate vital records.”
Russ Wilding, Chief Content Officer at MyHeritage said “We’re excited to partner with BillionGraves and Tributes.com to deliver such fascinating and meaningful content to our users. This is the type of information that adds color to our family histories and helps even experienced family historians break through brick walls in their research.”
For more details about this partnership, read the press release or read more about it on the MyHeritage blog.
A Special Offer for You!
We have teamed up with MyHeritage to give the friends and family of BillionGraves exclusive special 50% discount on MyHeritage’s annual PremiumPlus + Data membership! This combination of a PremiumPlus account, which provides space for an unlimited family tree, along with the Data Membership which gives unlimited access to billions of historical records, plus the automatic matching technologies which are included in this package is something you can’t find anywhere else!
- Click NOW to claim this limited time offer from MyHeritage! **Offer expired**
- When you purchase this special MyHeritage offer, a large portion of the proceeds will be given back to BillionGraves; these proceeds will be used to continue and improve our service.
This is the first time we have ever promoted a product like this to our users and we wouldn’t be promoting a product or company that we didn’t trust and believe in ourselves. With that said, we couldn’t be happier to partner with such a great company that shares our desires and commitments to enriching and connecting families around the world through this information.
Thank you again for your countless hours contributing to BillionGraves; we are extremely grateful! We look forward to this new partnership with MyHeritage and the exciting new features and advancements coming to BillionGraves in the upcoming months!
**Disclaimer**
This is a promotional offering sponsored by MyHeritage and is NOT required to make contributions to or gain access to the BillionGraves website. BillionGraves is and will always continue to be a free resource to you and the world. When you purchase this special MyHeritage offer, a large portion of the proceeds will be given back to BillionGraves. These proceeds will be used to continue and improve our service and maintain BillionGraves as a FREE resource.
New Tricks and Treats for Halloween – Search for Your Ancestors’ Gravestones and Obituaries Online at MyHeritage
Press Release
MyHeritage teams up with BillionGraves and Tributes.com, adding millions of gravestone records and obituaries to its searchable database of historical records.
TEL AVIV, Israel & LEHI, Utah & BOSTON, MA & KAYSVILLE, Utah – October 30, 2013 – MyHeritage, the popular online family history network, has partnered with BillionGraves and Tributes.com, making new gravestone and obituary collections available to search on its service. With advanced technologies enabling the automatic discovery of these records, MyHeritage makes it easier for families everywhere to shed light on their family history.
MyHeritage has licensed 5.5 million records and images of gravestones from BillionGraves, bringing its total collection of gravestone records to more than 100 million. Packed with valuable information that helps tell the story of an ancestor’s life, such as birth and death dates, family members and epitaphs written by loved ones, gravestones often provide an emotional turning-point in family history research. These records are available for free on SuperSearch, MyHeritage’s advanced search engine for historical records.
By partnering with Tributes.com, MyHeritage has added 3.5 million obituaries to its search engine. MyHeritage users will enjoy access to additional information about their ancestors, as obituaries help paint a more colorful picture of the life of deceased family members.
Users with family trees on MyHeritage will receive Record Matches – alerts about any gravestones or obituaries (amongst other records) that have been automatically matched to their ancestors.
The addition of these new collections highlights MyHeritage’s commitment to increase the quantity and quality of records available for its users. It follows MyHeritage’s announcement earlier this month about its strategic partnership with FamilySearch to bring more than 2 billion additional records to MyHeritage.
“We’re excited to partner with BillionGraves and Tributes.com to deliver such fascinating and meaningful content to our users”, said Russ Wilding, Chief Content Officer at MyHeritage. “This is the type of information that adds color to our family histories and helps even experienced family historians break through brick walls in their research.”
“Partnering with MyHeritage is an important milestone in the exponential growth of BillionGraves, solidifying our position as a key international resource for families seeking accurate vital records,” said Hudson Gunn, President of BillionGraves.
With over half of the users on the BillionGraves network under the age of 30, BillionGraves’ free mobile technology reaches beyond the “traditional” genealogist and caters to a new rising generation of enthusiastic contributors.
“At Tributes.com we believe that every life has a story that deserves to be told and preserved”, said Elaine Haney, CEO & President of Tributes.com. “We’re delighted to be able to extend access to these records and stories to MyHeritage’s huge global audience, helping millions more make meaningful discoveries about their ancestors.”
Through one centralized national web destination, with 95 million and growing current and historical death records dating back to the 1930s, Tributes.com has made obituary and online memorial service information easily accessible.
About MyHeritage
MyHeritage is a family history network helping millions of families around the world discover and share their legacy online. As technology thought leaders and innovators, MyHeritage is transforming family history into an activity that’s more accessible, exciting, and easier than ever before. MyHeritage empowers its global community of users with unique social tools, a massive library of historical content, and powerful search and matching technologies. The service is available in 40 languages. For more information, visit www.myheritage.com.
Press Contact
Aaron Godfrey, PR Manager for MyHeritage
Phone: US +1-347-329-5461 | UK +44-208-816-7571
Email: aaron@myheritage.com
About BillionGraves
With more than 5.5 million headstone records created by over 57,000 volunteers in just two years, BillionGraves is the trusted resource for accurate and reliable GPS headstone and burial record data on the web. With users in more than 212 countries, the website is available in 11 different languages. Over 13 thousand records are added each day to the BillionGraves network and four thousand new registered users join every month. BillionGraves’ mobile GPS tracking technology on its mobile application perpetuates this progress, bringing a wealth of genealogical information right to your fingertips.
About Tributes.com
Tributes.com is the online source for current local and national obituary news and a supportive community where friends and family can come together during times of loss and grieving to honor the memories of their loved ones with lasting personal tributes.
The brand has experienced rapid growth since its launch in the fall of 2008, and is now relied on by thousands of funeral homes and over four million unique consumers each month to publish and locate obituary news. For more information about Tributes.com, visit the website at www.tributes.com or contact media@tributes.com.