MyHeritage acquires family social network Kindo

MyHeritage, one of the world's most popular family websites, has announced the acquisition of family social network Kindo. MyHeritage has more than 25 million members worldwide and is known for its powerful technology that helps families research their history and stay connected, including Smart Matching and automatic photo tagging. The Kindo team's experience in social networking will help MyHeritage realize its vision to be the Facebook for families.

25 Sep 2008

As part of this acquisition, MyHeritage will also establish new commercial operations in London.

“Adding the Kindo team to MyHeritage puts the company in an even stronger position to realise its vision of connecting families around the world,” said Gilad Japhet, founder and CEO of MyHeritage. “The synergy of our innovative, sophisticated technology and Kindo's social networking and marketing expertise will further solidify our position as industry leader. Kindo successfully created a friendly service with an excellent reputation and great base of users.”

Founded by CEO Gilad Japhet, MyHeritage helps people around the world discover, connect and communicate with their extended family network and easily research their family history. The service is unique in its international reach, currently translated into 25 languages with more to follow. Its impressive growth is based on an increasing desire of families to stay closely connected, learn more about each other and share their photos. MyHeritage can be accessed through the website or by downloading a simple piece of software for free. Combining MyHeritage and Kindo will create a larger family network and instantly provide more value to its collective user base.

The London-based Kindo team will become an essential part of MyHeritage, joining forces to accomplish the company's vision of creating the best online destination for families. Kindo's users can now get easy access to MyHeritage's unique technology, helping them discover and learn even more about their family history. They will also benefit from MyHeritage's photo tagging technology, which automatically scans and identifies people in photos, making it easier for families to organise, search and share their photos.

“MyHeritage and Kindo share a common vision for the future of families online. We both want to give people an easy and fun way to stay connected, organise events, share memories, and strengthen ties across geographies,” said Nils Hammar, co-founder of Kindo. “When I worked at Skype, we saw firsthand how powerful the Internet could be in helping families communicate, and now we want to take that a step further with MyHeritage.”

Founded in 2007, London-based Kindo is an internationally focused web-based family networking platform that spans generations. On Kindo, users can build their free next generation family tree and stay in touch with their loved ones. Kindo is available in 17 languages, as diverse as Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and Hindi. The company is funded by high-profile business angels and venture capitalists, including The Accelerator Group (TAG), Stefan Glänzer (last.fm, myblog.de, ricardo.de) and Ambient Sound Investments (ASI), the investment company of Skype's founding engineers: http://kindo.com.

MyHeritage was founded by a team of people who combine their passion for family history with the development of innovative technology. It is now one of the world's leading online networks for families, and the second largest family history website. MyHeritage is available in 25 languages and home to more than 25 million family members and 265 million profiles. The company is based in Bnei Atarot, near Tel Aviv, Israel. For more information, visit www.myheritage.com.