MyFamily.com, Inc. Changes Corporate Name to The Generations Network
I read this in a recent press release:
MyFamily.com, Inc., the leading online network for connecting families across distance and time, today announced that it is changing its name to The Generations Network, Inc., effective immediately. The company will continue to serve families online through its portfolio of leading brands and websites.
Hu? The Generations Network? Hmmm. I don’t get it. I wasn’t a big fan of the name “MyFamily.com”, though I’ve gotten use to it over time. The company has proved itself as a long-standing member of the Internet community despite their name; the company’s combined properties form the No. 1 network of family history websites in both the United States and United Kingdom.
But “The Generations Network”? It doesn’t quite rub me right. It doesn’t even sound like the name of a company. I’m sure that the acronym TGN will be thrown around, to avoid having to say the whole thing (they already registered the URL), I mean can you imaging saying “I work for The (capitalize “The”) Generations Network”?
I do applaud them for breaking away from MyFamily.com, they needed to. Having MyFamily.com be the corporate name for all of their Internet properties (myfamily.com, ancestry.com, genealogy.com, rootsweb.com, etc), as well as the name of one of their products wasn’t working. Now MyFamily.com can have its own identity as a place for families to connect and share photos and news, and all the other properties (MyFamily.com included) can be rolled up under the mighty corporate cloud of The (capitalize “The”) Generations Network.
As part of the announcement, it looks like they are planning to relaunch MyFamily.com. I expect this is because of Web 2.0. Staying competitive in the new MySpace driven environment, and adding the functionality recently created with Web 2.0, I’m sure is a top priority.
We’ll have to see if the name grows on me over time.