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Dear users,

We are transferring Famiva.com and all content to a brand new infrastructure today. To complete the transfer, we need to pause the service for a few hours. We plan to disable access to Famiva.com around 4PM Pacific Time (PDT) today and will be back online no later than 1AM PDT.

Thanks for your patience during this transition time.

- Famiva Team

We just fixed a bug related to invitation acceptance. Some of your relatives that were invited to Famiva after 11/1/2009 may have received an error while attempting to sign-up. You may want to re-invite members with pending invitations going to the People page.

Thank you for your patience.

Best wishes,
Famiva Team

Family sites on Sampa now have an alternative to just shutting down! We’ve released our Sampa Migration Service. If you have a Sampa site, migrate now before it’s too late (the deadline is August 18, 2009). Going to http://famiva.com/sampa to automatically migrate your Sampa site and all the content.

Our special thanks to the Sampa Team for developing the export feature for its users.

Following is the full press release:

Famiva Releases Automatic Migration for Sampa Users

San Francisco, CA (July 21, 2009) — Famiva.com, a leading social network for families, announced the release of automatic migration service for Sampa users. Sampa Corporation recently announced that it is shutting down its Sampa.com Family Websites service on August 18, 2009. With Famiva.com’s new migration service, users can now import their entire Sampa site, including photos, blog posts, family tree, and profiles. By migrating to Famiva.com, Sampa users get a fully configured family site featuring hi-def photos, family tree builder, address book, events, maps, stories, news feeds and calendar.

“Creating a family site and signing up relatives takes a lot of time and effort. With Sampa shutting down, we decided to step up and offer Sampa users an automated service to transfer their content to Famiva,” commented Famiva CEO, Zak Mandhro. “We are dedicated to giving families a secure and private online space to connect, collaborate and preserve memories. Now Sampa users can take advantage of everything that Famiva has to offer, for free and with just a few clicks.”

Sampa users can import their sites, including those with custom domains, within seconds by simply visiting http://famiva.com/sampa and following the step-by-step wizard.

Founded in 2007, Famiva.com is a leading private social network for families. It enables thousands of families worldwide to capture their genealogy, connect with extended family, share photos, and preserve memories. The company recently released BabyBook.me, a virtual baby memory book and live journal powered by Facebook and Twitter. For more information about Famiva LLC products, visit http://famiva.com and http://babybook.me.

Famiva team is proud to introduce the much awaited GEDCOM import feature. You can now import your family tree from leading genealogy sites and desktop applications. Have a family tree on Famiva already? No problem. GEDCOM import will help you merge the two trees. You can preview the import, skip any members, and review merge options before executing the import.

Go ahead, import your family tree and visualize it with our live family network view!

- Famiva Team

There’s been a lot going on with Famiva.com. We’ve moved to a robust new infrastructure that will help us grow beyond our 330K user base. We’ve also made tons of enhancements. Here’s a summary of what’s new and exciting:

• Brand new site creation process:

  Our new site creation process is dead simple! We call it “Instant Gratification at Zero Risk”. We no longer require your real email address to try us out. Simply name your site, create a temporary login, and your site is ready for use. Our new landing page is much simpler too.
  

• New site tour:

  We have a brand new quick feature tour. Learn about the key features and capabilities of your free Famiva site with our clean and simple guided tour.
  

• New front page:

  The new and simplified front page focuses on the most relevant content. Get updates across your entire extended family right on the front page. You can see comments, reminders, new content, and more, at a glance. You can get email digests of the updates as well. There are links for quickly creating new content, such as uploading new photos or writing a new story. There’s also a “getting started” guide that helps you get the most out of your Famiva site.
  

• Enhanced photo browser:

  The photo explorer has also been restructured to focus on content. There’s a new scroller that lets you navigate to next and previous photo. Our smart “who’s in photo” helps you quickly tag people in the photo. We still have our beautiful full-screen and 3d photo slideshows, in case you haven’t tried it out. Also, we now support Media RSS format for photos.

• Stories, events, family tree and more:

  There are many other enhancements across the sites. Stories, events, calendar, family tree, etc. have all been improved, with more to come.
  

We hope you like what we’ve done with Famiva. Our team is growing and there is much more to come, including several of your requested features.

Thanks!
- Famiva Team

If you’re having trouble signing into Famiva after upgrading to Firefox 3.0, it may be because your session information is not compatible with the new browser. Simply logout and log back in using the following URL:

http://famiva.com/login/logout

Let us know if this doesn’t resolve the issue.

- Famiva Team

You asked for it, we built it. You can now enter a middle name for any member. Thanks for taking the time to suggest this simple yet useful little feature.

- Famiva Team

Quick FYI: Per your requests, we’ve just added the option to add a maiden name for any member. It’s available for female members on the family tree and “member update” page.

Thanks!
- Famiva Team

We fixed a bug related webmail imports. If you were having trouble importing your contacts, you may want to try again now.

Just a reminder: You can import your family members from GMail, Hotmail, MSN, Yahoo, etc. by clicking on “people” and “import” from the menu. You can then drag and drop the imported people onto your family tree.

Thanks!
- Famiva Team

Famiva team is pleased to announce a cool new feature on your family site. Introducing your personal email digest! You will now receive a summary of activities on your site, delivered right to your inbox. Stay updated on all the happenings on your site without having to be logged on. You’ll also get reminders for important events.

Set the email frequency to daily or weekly, or simply turn it off. Customize your settings at http://famiva.com/site/alerts

Enjoy!