The 2008 Dec 20 MyHeritage blog post Holiday promotion for our brand new Premium plans claims that the subscription plan has been simplified and focuses on the Holiday Promotion of 50% off the regular price, but the real news, not mentioned in the blog at all, but shown in the graphic, is that the maximum size for the free Basic plan has been lowered from 1000 to 500 individuals.
Thus, members who had a tree somewhere in between 500 and 1000 individuals suddenly saw themselves faced with monetary demands from MyHeritage.
As I remarked back then in a comment on a blog post by Randy Seaver already, I do not know whether it is legal to pull a change like that on existing members, but I do know that it is pretty bad PR to do so.
Last month I did a series of articles on the average size of genealogy databases. Average Size Month provides a quick overview of that series. That series ends with the observation that the numbers do mean something to vendors that set upload limits; when their upload limit is lower than the average size, they sure are missing out on a lot of data.
No genealogy hosting vendor wants to miss out on genealogy data. The total size of a vendor’s database is a big lure. A bigger database makes it more likely that you will find a match. A high likelihood of a match makes the site more attractive to new users, who will then upload yet more data. So, that is one reason to not set upload limits right there.
By setting upload limits, a vendor is limiting and thus slowing down its own growth. Not only are other vendors more attractive because of their lack of limits, these vendors also enjoy unlimited growth; even if these other vendors are still smaller today, they may surpass the self-limiting vendor tomorrow, and then be more attractive because of both their size and their lack of limits.
Limited Genealogy pointed out that limits do not just limit quantity, but quality and reputation too. Limits cause users to leave for others sites, where they will publish their larger database complete with corrections to old data. The limited site will retain the smaller database, and not be updated with corrections of the errors therein. Thus, the site that sets limits creates itself a reputation for small low-quality databases, while other sites continue to build themselves a reputation for large high-quality databases.
While the average tree size of most genealogy hosting sites is slowly increasing, MyHeritage’s average tree size is quickly decreasing.
The theory in Limited Genealogy seems to be correct. The theory in Limited Genealogy implies that MyHeritage’s average was already low because of their limit of 1000 individuals, and predicts that the average is decreasing now that they lowered that already small limit down to 500.
The Korean website DAL did an article about MyHeritage on 2008 Sep 18. That article includes a screen shot of the home page. Back then, there were 263.439.657 records in 3.898.917 trees, so that is an average size of 67,567 individuals per tree.
Yesterday, there were 353.265.376 records in 7.236.769 trees, that is an average of 48,815 individuals per tree.
| date | records | trees | average |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2008-09-18 | 263.439.657 | 3.898.917 | 67,567 |
| 2009-07-11 | 353.265.376 | 7.236.769 | 48,815 |
While the tree average size of most genealogy hosting sites is slowly increasing, MyHeritage’s average tree size is quickly decreasing.
It is less than a year ago that MyHeritage halved their already rather small limit, and the average size of MyHeritage trees is still decreasing. Early in June of this year, it was still 49,3, and today it is barely above 48,8.
Yet, undeterred by the effects of its previous decision, MyHeritage has decided to half the limit yet again.
Their 2009 Jul 9 blog post Changes in Basic plan and special discount for Premium
focuses on how amazing
the Summer Special of 35% off the regular price for a
Premium account is, but what’s really amazing is that they are lowering the
limit for the Basic plain again, this time from 500 to 250.
Yes, within less than year, they have quartered the limit for the Basic plan
from 1000 to 250 individuals.
Members had received an email about the change and were discussing it on the MyHeritage forum before the blog post was up. Member rsht61 quotes a reaction that MyHeritage left on a negative my3cents review:
Never has any product capability or functionality available for free on MyHeritage, been made non-free. At one time in the history of the company, around December 2008, we’ve had to reduce the total family tree individual quota available for free from 1000 to 500 names in order to avoid too many users taking advantage of the company’s services without paying.
The member notes that That has the ring of an adamant insistence that something like that happened once and won't happen again.
and that observation cuts to the heart of the issue for many members and
would-be members; this is the second time they are doing this, who’s to say they won’t do
something like that a third time?
When MyHeritage lowered the limit from 1000 to 500, they created a FAQ entry titled Why is my Basic Family Site Plan limited to 500 people, it used to be 1000 people? That FAQ entry has been removed.
There now is a new FAQ entry titled Why is my Basic Family Site Plan limited to 250 people, it used to be 500 people? This was presumably posted at the same time as the blog post, yet is antedated 2008 Dec 11.
It is fairly obvious what happened here; MyHeritage overwrote the old entry with a new one. That may have been done with the best of intentions, but that it erases evidence that the limit was lowered less than year ago already does not make MyHeritage look good. They should either have left it up (and perhaps added a link to the new entry about further reduction of the limit), or replaced it with one entry Why is my Basic Family Site Plan limited to 250 people, it used to be 500 people, and 1000 people before that?.
Other genealogy hosting vendors are probably MyHappy about this latest move, and already ordering new servers and ramping up their PR to welcome the exodus of MyHeritage members.
I expect the immediate effect of this move to be that the average size of MyHeritage family trees will soon decrease faster than it is decreasing already.
I already thought that MyHeritage was making a big mistake by reducing the limit the first, I think they are making a huge mistake by reducing it again, not in the least because it breeds uncertainty about the future.
I think MyHeritage should announce that they’ve reconsidered, have seen the self-destructive errors of their ways and are increasing the limit for basic trees from 500 to 5.000 and promise to never decrease it again.
MyHeritage could follow that with the announcement that there will no longer be any limit on tree size, but that they will henceforth only be charging for additional services such as Smart Matching and photo storage.
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