Israel’s MyHeritage, a popular family history network, has announced the launch of its new free service called Instant Discoveries. The company says that it makes it easier for new users to embark on their genealogical journey.
In promoting Instant Discoveries, the company asks potential users to imagine what it would be like to shown a never before seen photo of a grandparent at the moment that they sign up for its service.
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“Or, if you were given a family tree branch with many of your ancestors, just by entering some basic information? Discoveries can be magical and help engage newcomers to family history and introduce them to this fascinating activity, ” MyHeritage also asks.
The company boasts that with Instant Discoveries, it takes only seconds for people who sign up to MyHeritage to discover ancestors and create an online family tree with many relatives and photos. After perfecting the technology, the company boasts, it took Instant Discoveries to the streets of New York and successfully demonstrated it to passers-by.
Until now, signing up for MyHeritage involved building a family tree from scratch. It took some time for matches to arrive and going over them was a very detailed and scientific process, in which information could be added to one’s tree bit by bit. It was not possible to add an entire branch to one’s tree in a single click even if the user completely trusted the source of information.
With Instant Discoveries, new users who sign up to MyHeritage and do not have an existing tree, are asked to optionally enter basic information about the seven closest individuals in their tree and then they automatically receive Instant Discoveries about their ancestors and relatives, allowing them to expand their family tree on the spot.
MyHeritage says that it then quickly matches their tree to the billions of family tree profiles and historical records on the site and finds where there is the most incremental information and offers it to the user as an Instant Discovery. The user can accept it in a click, for free, or skip and be offered another discovery. All former matching technologies on MyHeritage including Smart Matches, Record Matches and the Record Detective are still fully available.
