Thursday, September 18, 2008

eBay comes to Ancestry... sorta

I got this press release today about a new top gun at Ancestry.com. It seems they are still shaking things up after the Family Tree Maker 2008 disaster. They have gone out and grabbed one of eBay's brightest. Hopefully Eric can help bring some of prestige back to the product line.

"Eric Shoup, Former General Manager for eBay Stores, Joins The Generations Network as Ancestry.com's Vice President of Product
Management Leader to Play Key Role in Bay Area Growth of Ancestry.com

PRNewswire
PROVO, Utah

PROVO, Utah, Sept. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- The Generations Network (TGN), parent company of Ancestry.com, today announced the hiring of Eric Shoup as vice president of product for the Ancestry.com business unit. As a new management leader, Shoup will be responsible for the product strategy, product definition and design for the global platform of Ancestry.com, the world's largest online family history resource. He will lead the product management and user interface design teams. Bringing more than 15 years of product marketing and general management experience, he will be based in the company's San Francisco office.

"We're thrilled to have Eric Shoup join Ancestry.com during this time of accelerated growth," said Andrew Wait, senior vice president and general manager of family history for Ancestry.com. "Eric is key to the continued expansion of Ancestry.com and to our company's increasing presence in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. His impressive background and strong leadership skills make him the best person to lead this effort while nicely complimenting our team in Utah."

Prior to joining TGN, Shoup was at eBay for five years, where he focused on growing several of eBay's growing businesses, most recently as the general manager for the eBay Stores and ProStores business units. In a previous position, Eric assembled and led eBay's first global mobile product team. During his eBay career, Shoup also played key product leadership roles over different areas such as eBay Stores, Shipping and Merchandising.

Prior to eBay, Shoup drove key product marketing and management initiatives at Commerce One, a leading provider of global e-commerce solutions for businesses. While at US Interactive, Shoup designed and managed consumer ecommerce and marketing Web sites for established companies such as Lexus and Wellcome Supermarkets (Hong Kong).

As a new member of the management team, Shoup will work closely with a strong team of professionals in Ancestry.com's new San Francisco office, including Cheyenne Richards, recently promoted to vice president of marketing and a former executive with Avenue A Razorfish, as well as co-workers recently hired from Yahoo, Apple, Organic, CNET, Zenith Optimedia and Expedia.

About the Ancestry Global Network

The Ancestry global network of family history Web sites is wholly owned by The Generations Network, Inc. It consists of nine Web sites -- http://www.ancestry.com/ in the U.S., http://www.ancestry.co.uk/ in the UK, http://www.ancestry.ca/ in Canada, http://www.ancestry.com.au/ in Australia, http://www.ancestry.de/ in Germany, http://www.ancestry.it/ in Italy, http://www.ancestry.fr/ in France, http://www.ancestry.se/ in Sweden and http://www.jiapu.cn/ in China. Ancestry members have access to 7 billion names contained in 26,000 historical record collections. Tree-building and photo upload are free on all Ancestry websites. To date, Ancestry.com users have created more than 7 million family trees containing 675 million profiles and 11 million photographs. Nearly 5.4 million unique visitors logged onto Ancestry.com in July 2008 (comScore Media Metrix, Worldwide).

SOURCE: Ancestry.com

CONTACT: Sara Black of PainePR, +1-213-996-3812, sblack@painepr.com, for
Ancestry.com

Web site: http://www.ancestry.com/"

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As a new member of the management team, Shoup will work closely with a strong team of professionals in Ancestry.com's new San Francisco office, including Cheyenne Richards, recently promoted to vice president of marketing and a former executive with Avenue A Razorfish, as well as co-workers recently hired from Yahoo, Apple, Organic, CNET, Zenith Optimedia and Expedia.