In early December, Ancestry made the announcement that they were retiring the sales of FamilyTree Maker Software. Mass panic ensued. The issue, of course, was not so much the retiring of the software as it was that the trees could no longer be synchronized with the online trees on Ancestry.
Last week, at RootsTech the announcement was made that FamilyTree Maker is alive and well once again, having been bought out by MacKiev. The company assures new functionality features. Simultaneous to that announcement came news that RootsMagic was now the software to have, since Ancestry will allow synchronization between RootsMagic and their online trees.
Bad timing!
While I understand that major events like RootsTech are prime places for genealogy related companies to make major announcements, the unfortunate piece is that Christmas occurred in between the announcement from Ancestry that FamilyTree Maker was out and RootsTech where we learned that RootsMagic was in.
In a panic, after the initial announcement, people turned to the genealogy bloggers and gurus and then added genealogy software to their Christmas lists. Bad news for the Ancestry users who didn't ask Santa for RootsMagic!
Of course, for those of us who don't care about the synchronization or who can work around it with other software, there really is no issue. But Ancestry isn't catering to us. They are catering to the people who only know to click, click, click. And have likely caused even more anxiety by waiting to announce the transition.
Think twice before making big announcements, Ancestry. It all comes down to customer satisfaction and you have truly missed the mark on this one.
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