Today, Visitors to FamilyLink discovered that the site had changed its name, and is now known as FamilyHistoryLink.com. That does not only seem an unnecessary change, but a step backwards. FamilyLink is the better name of the two; short, to the point, and easy to type quickly.
The name change was not announced through any press release. FamilyLink does not have blog, but it was announced through the WorldVitalRecords blog or Paul Allen’s personal blog either.
The change seems to have been executed in a hurry. Visitors discovered that a lot of things are not working properly right now. The move was in fact executed so poorly, that it prompted Randy Seaver to publish a rant about it.
It was his post that alerted me to the change, and made me do a bit of digging for information on the change. Turns out that Paul Allen has discovered that blogging is old school. Hip kids use twitter, and Paul Allen is a hip kid...
I found these three tweets by Paul Allen (paulballen on twitter):
2008-09-11 02:15 paulballen making big decisions about genealogy, history, and social networking for families -- one company or three companies?
2008-09-11 06:01 paulballen It’s always painful to change domain names. We’ve moved familylink.com to familyhistorylink.com to make room for the new familylink.com
2008-09-11 02:15 paulballen Familyhistorylink.com will be our social network for genealogists. FamilyLink.com will be our flagship site for connecting to relatives
Paul Allen did write a blog entry, just not about FamilyLink, but about We’re Related: We’re Related users to be spammed?.
Today, WorldVitalRecords (FamilyLink is still having trouble deciding whether to use its old or new name) send out a news mail titled GenealogyWise is replacing FamilyHistoryLink. More about this in FamilyLink abandoning FamilyLink.
The FamilyHistoryLink domain is defunct. The broken link has been removed.
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