We’re pleased to announce that 1000memories has been acquired by Ancestry.com.

We’ve had the privilege of getting to know the team at Ancestry.com over the past two years and are excited to join forces and expand the reach of 1000memories and ShoeBox to Ancestry.com’s millions of users. Today’s announcement is the result of the respect and mission shared by our two companies.

Our companies are tackling the same problem—helping our users to preserve and share their family history—in different ways. Ancestry is helping people preserve family records lost in the world. We are helping them preserve the family records lost in their closets. We believe we are stronger together.

To mark the occasion, we’re launching a new version of ShoeBox for iPhone, enabling users to post photos directly to their forebears’ profiles on Ancestry.com. This is the first step in a broader plan that will see tighter integration of the two services in the coming months.

Looking Back

We’ve come a long way since the first days of 1000memories, holed up at the lovely Four Points Sheraton—by the airport. With high aspirations, we left comfortable jobs in cities we loved to build software that would make people’s lives better.

The idea for 1000memories was born out of our personal frustration with not being able to tell stories of people’s lives—the people most important to us. The first version of our site was an experiment in collaborative storytelling and a reinvention of traditional memorials. Over time we saw that your best stories were coming from old photos–the best ones hiding in the back of your closet–and launched ShoeBox to help you preserve and share those photos in an shareable space.

We feel extremely grateful to our users—especially those who lent us their time and offered suggestions for improving our service—as well as advisors like Greylock, SV Angel, Lowercase, Elad Gil, Craig Sherman, and many others who bent their ears and gave us advice.

Moving Forward

If you’re curious about what will happen to your photos on 1000memories, I’m happy to say that not only will Ancestry.com keep the site running but will continue to invest in its success. We’ll have more resources, and the backing of the global leader in family history.

Our entire team will be joining Ancestry.com's San Francisco office today to continue working on 1000memories’ website, the ShoeBox app, and more beautiful tools to advance our shared mission of helping people discover, preserve, and share stories and photos from the past. We couldn’t be more excited.

We expect to do great things in the coming year. Stay tuned.

Team 1000memories
(Rudy, Brett, Mike, Bruno, Peter, Jordan)