RootsWeb Logo Change
March 9th, 2007 by JamieAs many of you know, RootsWeb is owned by The Generations Network (formerly MyFamily.com, Inc.). When MyFamily.com, Inc. changed its name to TGN in late 2006, the company also took on a major rebranding effort, committed to bringing the visual identities of Ancestry, Genealogy.com, MyFamily, Family Tree Maker, and RootsWeb together. The end result of all the the rebranding is available on the TGN website.
For RootsWeb, the result of all of that hard work is that we have been given a new logo! As we say goodbye to the RootsWeb tree, we welcome the new logo (affectionately called “the sproutlets” by the RootsWeb staff). We are especially excited that this logo symbolizes growth and community, two vital components of what RootsWeb is all about.
Over the next few weeks and months, you will start to see the sproutlets pop up around RootsWeb. Eventually, the headers and site logos all over RootsWeb will be replaced with this new logo, but we want to wait to launch those changes until we can work together with you, the community, on widespread visual changes. We’ve heard your concerns about the readability of font sizes and colors and we know that you, the community, are our very best resource for learning what works on RootsWeb.
March 9th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Does that mean you’re going to enhance the distinction between colors of read and unread messages on the boards?
March 11th, 2007 at 10:05 am
Does this mean you are going to return to the former Message Board structure based on Messages not on the cumbersome and constantly irritating ‘thread’ structure?
We’ll get a link in each message to the message it is responding to?
When there’s a link to a Board message gatewayed to a List, it will link to the Message rather than to the Thread?
These are just a few items that have repeatedly been on the want-list of many Rootsweb users.
Oh, and the silly logo lacks the symbolism of the tree. This is not a blog site or chat room. Thank heavens.
March 11th, 2007 at 11:58 am
I really hate to be negative, but that is the sickest green color I have seen. It is actually painful to view.
“Sproutlets” doesn’t come close to representing RootsWeb, the oldest genealogical cooperative on the Internet. You should be celebrating THAT, the root of it all, not sprouts.
March 12th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
A tree is the comprehensive whole, and the concept of “sproutlets” is unappealing. We are, after all, searching to fill in our family trees which is a concept accepted by many generations of people. The blue color of the existing logo is visually more appealing and is a color favored by more people than any other color. I don’t think these cosmetic changes are necessary, nor desirable. I just want lots of databases and good access to them.
I echo the comments about Messages as opposed to Threads and do find this procedure to be an irritant. And don’t get me started about the manner in which Ancestry.com began displaying “hits” last year. Why must a searcher go through page after page of “hits” with no idea of how many hits still remain?
March 13th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
As a marketing and advertising professional, I have to tell you that is the sorriest-looking logo I’ve seen in quite a while. I truly implore you to re-think this decision.
March 13th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
I agree the GREEN is PUTRID…sickly…yucky…gaggy…like an ugly moss,
you get the point!
March 14th, 2007 at 10:46 am
The WorldConnect update mechanism has been broken for several days and no one thought it important to let users know.
Getting reliable information from RootsWeb seems to be a crapshoot. While Ancestry spouts color-coordinated bile about their new logo:
“We are especially excited that this logo symbolizes growth and community, two vital components of what RootsWeb is all about.”,
apparently WorldConnect users are not part of that community.
Nothing really ever changes … except the logo.
March 17th, 2007 at 8:30 am
The LOGO change is insignificant. Whether it remains the ‘tree’ we’ve all come to recognize and like, or it becomes ’sprouts’ or even if you make it look like ‘roots’ or a spider’s web, well – the change has already been decided. You are in the process of even weeding out older employees and adding new ones in greater numbers. Change is, and always will be, something to which we will simply have to endure, and learn to love.
What really matters is how you run your organization. I think it is suffering at the moment. I’ve contacted the HelpDesk several times but either no one is listening, or it has no way to answer. As a List Administrator, this is most upsetting, in that you are failing to alert those of us at this level when problems within are happening. If I might suggest, please consider improving your lines of communication to your members – not only to the new subscriber, but to us who’ve been here, and who contribute, as often as we can.
March 31st, 2007 at 11:31 pm
I like the new “sproutlets” and have already displayed the new logo on the Giles County, TN RootsWeb.com web site:
http://www.rootsweb.com/~tngiles/
Good job!
Anna
July 23rd, 2007 at 11:35 am
[...] Many of you may remember an article posted a few months back where we introduced our new logo for RootsWeb, as part of the overall rebranding effort of The Generations Network (our parent company). In the next week or two we will be updating the headers on the site to include this new logo, as well as to update the Ancestry.com logo currently in the header. [...]