I remember when I first learned about LinkedIn.com, and was the 4th person to sign up for it in Utah County. Soon I got into a competition with two friends to see who could end up with the most (real) connections. I finally won that competition, but we all ended up with hundreds of connections. But I remember when one of my friends knew they were losing on the connections number that they claimed to be winning on "endorsements." They changed their key metric, so that they could claim that they had actually won.

This morning at a very small press conference in Kansas City at the National Genealogical Society annual conference we made a very large announcement.

In fact, we announced something that I have personally hoped for and dreamed of for more than a decade.

Today we announced a partnership between FamilySearch and FamilyLink.com to publish the Family History Library Catalog -- the largest single database of genealogy sources in the world -- in Web 2.0 fashion.

This means that individual genealogists, librarians, archivists, and others from around the world will be able, when the Catalog 2.0 comes online in the coming months, to enhance and extend the value of the catalog. Users will be able to add new sources that are currently in the library catalog, and thus extend its scope of coverage. They will be able to improve the source descriptions, and even rate and review sources as to their usefulness.

Yesterday we set two traffic records. WorldVitalRecords.com had more than 36,000 unique visitors--6,000 higher than our two previous best days, earlier in April. And We're Related on Facebook had more than 105,000 daily active users.

One of the best parts about being an internet entrepreneur is how immediately your actions translate into measureable results. Our team members are working hard on search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, email marketing campaigns, and improving our affiliate marketing program. As each channel improves, the overall cumulative results are exciting.

World Vital Records President David Lifferth keeps the company well informed about our key metrics. I got this information from him yesterday in an email:

We use Qualtrics survey software (which we really like) and have a panel of customers who have agreed to answer survey questions every month. We appreciate the customers who are willing to take time to give us their opinions. We pay a great deal of attention to the feedback. We adjust our work and investment priorities based on what our customers tell us.

Our last survey had 15 questions. We received answers from 1,041 customers. Here are some interesting facts:

The Generations Network, formerly MyFamily.com, announced today a $300 million acquisition by Spectrum Equity, a $4 billion private equity fund with offices in Menlo Park and Boston. It is expected that the current management team will continue to lead the company, which is headquartered in Provo, Utah.

Last week I sent an email to the investors in World Vital Records with a bunch of good news. We had a record sales week. We are signing more partnerships. Our marketing programs are gaining momentum. Our content collection is growing fast. One of them emailed back with a question: how are our Facebook apps doing?

FamilyLink.com, the social network for genealogists, is testing our new family tree software with GEDCOM upload functionality. The site and the tree are still in beta, but the feedback we are getting is encouraging. FamilyLink members are now uploading their trees and sharing them with others. Just yesterday we had 39,000 ancestor names uploaded. Geni.com got 5 million profiles in 5 months. At 39,000 in one day, we are running at the same pace.

Jeff Pytlewski, a genealogist for more than 12 years, has blogged about FamilyLink.com a couple of times. Here is his post from yesterday entitled "MySpace for Genealogists: FamilyLink...The Sequel."

Today is a very big day for World Vital Records, a company that was started less than a year ago by a talented group that included several former Ancestry.com employees. This is quite likely the biggest day in our 11-month history.

At the NGS conference in Richmond, Virginia, the following new partnerships were announced: