MyHeritage debuts OldNews.com, offering access to myriad historical newspapers
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Re: MyHeritage debuts OldNews.com, offering access to myriad historical newspapers
#2They seem to be competing with https://www.newspapers.com/, which has been providing access to historical newspapers for about 10 years now.
I did a few searches on OldNews.com to compare with Newspapers.com, and it seems that OldNews has a smaller database, with far fewer newspapers. It didn't contain results from a sampling of local newspapers that I tried, nor from major newspapers like the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, or Chicago Tribune.
At $99/year, OldNews is also slightly more expensive than the basic Newspapers.com subscription.
Their UX is also lacking, with poor filtering options that make it difficult to select a specific publication, city, or range of dates.
It's not clear to me how they hope to compete with the incumbent in the market.
Re: MyHeritage debuts OldNews.com, offering access to myriad historical newspapers
#3They seem to be competing with https://www.newspapers.com/ , which has been providing access to historical newspapers for about 10 years now. I did a few searches on OldNews.com to compare with Newspapers.com, and it seems that OldNews has a smaller database, with far fewer newspapers. It didn't contain results from a sampling of local newspapers that I tried, nor from major newspapers like the NY Times, Wall Street…
They're probably just banking on the fact that MyHeritage has a lot more customers than either one of those, who probably haven't heard of either one, and are already proven to shell out money to research their family history. Whatever you show them first, they'll use. Of course the smart customers like you are going to stick with the better alternative but I think you're in a small minority of elites.
Re: MyHeritage debuts OldNews.com, offering access to myriad historical newspapers
#4They seem to be competing with https://www.newspapers.com/ , which has been providing access to historical newspapers for about 10 years now. I did a few searches on OldNews.com to compare with Newspapers.com, and it seems that OldNews has a smaller database, with far fewer newspapers. It didn't contain results from a sampling of local newspapers that I tried, nor from major newspapers like the NY Times, Wall Street…
They're probably just banking on the fact that MyHeritage has a lot more customers than either one of those, who probably haven't heard of either one, and are already proven to shell out money to research their family history. Whatever you show them first, they'll use. Of course the smart customers like you are going to stick with the better alternative but I think you're in a small minority of elites.
Newspapers.com is an Ancestry.com property. I'm not sure who's the larger company in terms of user base, do you know their respective sizes?
Re: MyHeritage debuts OldNews.com, offering access to myriad historical newspapers
#5The #1 thing anybody should be asking for here is a list of newspapers they archive. I cannot see it. The obvious competitor to these people is https://www.newspapers.com and they at least have a crude one: https://www.newspapers.com/papers. Note that the Seattle Times (and newspapers from the NW in general) are missing. Does oldnews do better here?
Re: MyHeritage debuts OldNews.com, offering access to myriad historical newspapers
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're probably just banking on the fact that MyHeritage has a lot more customers than either one of those, who probably haven't heard of either one, and are already proven to shell out money to research their family history. Whatever you show them first, they'll use. Of course the smart customers like you are going to stick with the better alternative but I think you're in a small minority of elites.
Newspapers.com is an Ancestry.com property. I'm not sure who's the larger company in terms of user base, do you know their respective sizes?
They are both around 4 milion paying users (each)
Re: MyHeritage debuts OldNews.com, offering access to myriad historical newspapers
#7It's such a shame that recent historical newspapers are closed source in this way. We could learn so much from quantitative analysis of culture if there were downloadable data or at least an API.
Re: MyHeritage debuts OldNews.com, offering access to myriad historical newspapers
#8It's such a shame that recent historical newspapers are closed source in this way. We could learn so much from quantitative analysis of culture if there were downloadable data or at least an API.
Just to add an example: https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/119646/13/WRAP-historical-analysi...
Re: MyHeritage debuts OldNews.com, offering access to myriad historical newspapers
#9In the Netherlands we have a great online and free resource called Delpher that allows citizens to freely browse over 2 million newspapers from previous decades.
Its bizarre to see how important archival content like that is being monetized instead of commoditised by MyHeritage…
For example, Delpher allowed me to investigate the life of some of my family members from whom I knew close to nothing.
Re: MyHeritage debuts OldNews.com, offering access to myriad historical newspapers
#10The #1 thing anybody should be asking for here is a list of newspapers they archive. I cannot see it. The obvious competitor to these people is https://www.newspapers.com and they at least have a crude one: https://www.newspapers.com/papers . Note that the Seattle Times (and newspapers from the NW in general) are missing. Does oldnews do better here?
It seems like OldNews has a very limited set of papers, I couldn't find results from any of the major newspapers (NY Times, WaPo, Chicago Trib, etc) or from a sampling of local papers that I tried.