brightsolid online publishing

brightsolid online publishing has significant expertise in building innovative online businesses around people and places. We provide bespoke solutions, which can include project management, funding and revenue share models, online technology, scanning and indexing, marketing and PR.

findmypast.co.uk, owned and operated by brightsolid, offers access to over 700 million records dating as far back as 1538 and was the first company to digitise the civil registration indexes of births, marriages and deaths for England & Wales and to make them available via the internet. The company received the Queen’s Award for Innovation for this achievement and was instrumental in fuelling the growth in family history seen in recent years. Subsequent large-scale projects have been undertaken, including the complete run of censuses from 1841 to 1901 and BT27 passenger lists. findmypast.co.uk has 1.6 million registered customers

Friends Reunited is the original social network and the place to share life’s big experiences. It allows members to make new friends and keep in touch with old friends by, among other things, interacting with the thousands of user groups and searching millions of records grouped by schools, universities, clubs and armed forces. It has over 20 million members, a group which is both growing and active. The site is free to use and is funded by advertising.


Genes Reunited is the UK’s leading family history brand with 10 million members and over 650 million names listed. A key strength is its strong membership community driven by members keen to help each other trace their ancestry. Increasingly aspects of social networking and genealogy are naturally overlapping and the Group is ideally placed to drive these developments. Genes is funded through subscriptions and pay-per-view.


Friends Reunited Dating is one of the largest paid-for dating sites in the UK with over one million registered members. It is recognised as an easy to use website, with a friendly user community.

scotlandspeople.gov.uk is a PayAsYouGo e-commerce site operated by brightsolid as a partnership between the General Register Office for Scotland, the National Archives of Scotland and the Court of the Lord Lyon. It allows users to search and obtain genealogical information about their Scottish heritage. The site allows searches of 50 million names, has more than 30 million images and over three quarters of a million registered customers.

ancestorsonboard.com is a microsite co-branded with The National Archives to showcase for an international market passenger records digitised from The National Archives’ series BT 27 - Outbound Passenger Lists 1890-1960. Full colour scans of handwritten and printed passenger lists for 24 million passengers have been fully transcribed, enabling customers to search the records with ease.

1911census.co.uk In April 2007 brightsolid was awarded the contract by The National Archives to scan and digitise the 1911 census for England & Wales. Comprising 36 million records, this is one of the largest online family history projects undertaken by The National Archives and a commercial partner.

brightsolid created and published online high-resolution colour scans of 16 million handwritten documents, fully transcribing their contents and creating a searchable website for customers to find, view and download their ancestors’ census forms. The website was successfully launched in January 2009, three years ahead of the original scheduled date. The project was entirely funded by brightsolid and the site operates on a revenue sharing model with The National Archives

Marketing and PR services were also provided by brightsolid as part of the contract. On launch day alone over 645,000 people made a total of 1.2 million visits to 1911census.co.uk. They conducted 3.4 million searches and viewed 17.4 million pages of census records. The launch received significant media interest and handled the huge volume of traffic with ease. The story dominated the news agenda at launch, reaching every news media outlet from BBC Breakfast to Newsnight, generating unprecedented first day sales.

| | | | |