Itongadol.- My Heritage, one of the world’s most successful genealogy websites with 1.5 billion user profiles, has given the world access to its family history. Now the company has decided to take its exploits a step further, by mapping out all of the world’s graveyards and recording each tombstone.
CEO and founder Gilad Japhet, from Israel, came up with the idea for MyHeritage at the age of 13, as part of his own personal journey to discover his family’s roots. Fast forward a few decades, and MyHeritage last month announced its searchable collection of historical records passed the 5 billion milestone.
The company’s most recent partnership with BillionGraves, a global initiative to digitally preserve the world’s cemeteries, has added to MyHeritages’s already enormous database. Michael Mallin, Chief Product Officer, tells NoCamels: “We believe the BillionGraves partnership is one of the most original ideas of crowdsourcing, mobilizing hundreds of thousands of volunteers to go out to graveyards and photograph tombstones.”
While the notion of photographing a tombstone may seem odd for some, BillionGraves’ has created an easy-to-use mobile application that allows users to snap a picture and record the geographic location of the tombstone with a quick click. The images captured by BillionGraves users are then added to a large database of tombstone locations, which is set to enrich the already impressive collection of historical records available on genealogy websites like MyHeritage.