FamilyTreeDNA email -"We're In It For the Long Run"

Question

More than ever before, we're committed to you, our FamilyTreeDNA community, and to helping you further your journey of discovery — not just today but for many years to come.

Over the last several months, we've been working on new features and improvements that you’ve requested. We are excited to announce that many of these improvements - and some new features - will be released in the coming days and weeks! 

It's just the beginning of the exciting improvements we are looking forward to making this year!

Here's a quick sneak peek of what's coming in July!

Family Finder Updates

A redesign of the Family Finder matches page for better navigation.

Improvements to the matching algorithm, potentially increasing matches for many users.

Improvements to the predicted relationship ranges.

Improvements to X-chromosome matching.

Additional sorting, filtering, and search options, including for your shared matches' family trees.

New Chromosome Painter feature for myOrigins. 

Y-DNA Updates

A redesign of the Y-DNA matches page for better navigation.

Easily view a breakdown of the number of matches per marker level and the country of origin for your matches' earliest known paternal ancestor.

Improved sorting, filtering, and search options.

New Help Center

Redesign of the Learning Center to improve navigation and quality of information. The new Learning Center will be called the Help Center. 

New Help Center will include helpful tutorial videos.

Website Performance & Usability 

Faster page load times.

Improved website stability.

We've added tooltips throughout the platform for reference.

Links to the Help Center throughout the platform for when you need a little more help understanding results or navigating a page.

Important Notes

As a result of National Geographic's depreciation of the Genographic Project, the FamilyTreeDNA Genographic Project Transfers page will no longer be accessible after June 30th. If you have any remaining transfers to upload, please do so before this date. (Ed note: I received the email at 9:30 PM EDT on 29 June...)

Please note, at the time of the release of the Family Finder updates, your matches' original match dates might be temporarily unavailable but they will be replaced with the correct date in the following weeks.

Comments

I had 18 Family Finder (autosomal) matches when I first tested with them in 2011. I now have 1539. I know how I connect to a few of them. In at least one match, it is further proof of family story which connects one of my lines to others with same name in other parts of PA. They need to change the labels of relationships, and need to stop counting tiny segments in the determination of relationships. I also do not like that I have no Y-DNA matches, which I have been told by people in one of my projects there is due to how they count difference in STR values. One of mine is "7," so if the norm is "13," already I am off by 6.

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They changed the website already. Not sure if it is still possible to compare Family Finder (autosomal DNA) matches in common (ICW). EDIT: Found how to do ICW, but website is kind of not quite completely working for me yet.

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They report the Genetic Disitance the way they do because one can have a marker move two steps in one mutation. So actually it is the more accurate way to report genetic distance and helped increase the accuracy of the TiP calculator estimates.

Answer 1

A redesign of the Family Finder matches page for better navigation.

Improvements to the matching algorithm, potentially increasing matches for many users.

These changes are LONG OVER due - IMO.

I did my DNA through FT DNA and my matches are still iffy.

I also still have only a small number of good (strong) matches. 

Comments

Mine was also done at ftdna and I have the opposite problem - about 40,000 matches, which I can't even begin to try to chase down.  About 8,000 are 1st - 3rd cousin.

Answer 2

I did my autosomal and Y-DNA through FT DNA and have only "found" two real matches I was able to confirm. One was a reasonably close cousin who I knew already and the other has a questionable additional link in his tree that I didn't bother to debate with him. I figured the DNA proved we were connected, and the general path it took seemed logical, even if we might differ on one step.

Other than that, I've not had a lot of luck with their matches. It would be nice if others would load up a small family tree so that I could at least "attempt" to see where we might connect, but most don't do that. And I've noticed that the vast majority get weirded out when you send them an email to tell them "I've been stalking your DNA profile and I think we're related." They tend to get very private and protective very quickly. Imagine that...

Answer 3

I uploaded my updated Gedcom yesterday. I have over 2,000 matches on my mother's line and a little of 1,000 on my father's line. These are STRONG matches. I have 296 X-chromosome matches for my mother.

Now if I could only link all of these matches up that would be great. :)

Answer 4

My favorite feature is to filter for those folks who have trees.  The tree navigation is still painful on FTDNA but at least it is better than it once was.

I have about 460 matches.  Not as much as the 1,000s of matches that folks with close to 100% colonial roots get but not shabby. For LivingDNA, it is only 225, 487 for Ancestry, and 1770 for 23andMe . . .  MyHeritage, oddly enough, reports 7,911 matches.

Hopefully, the improvements to the auDNA and yDNA searches will be applied to the mitoDNA searches in the near future.

Answer 5

The weakness of the Y DNA study at FTDNA is most matches have little to no family tree posted. Therefore when you do have matches they aren't much good to advance your research. Yes, you can contact them, but most don't respond.