What if you could associate your shared auDNA with shared ancestry?

Question

MyHeritage announced today that they will soon have DNA Matching.  Free at first, but later maybe for a fee.  So why can't GEDmatch, DNA.Land, DNAgedcom, or Family Finder simply include a link to an auDNA tester's ancestral tree in WikiTree? e.g. http://www.wikitree.com/treewidget/Roberts-7085/5 or WikiTree's Relationship Finder?

Announcement from MyHeritage: "We're excited to let you know that we now offer the ability to upload DNA data to your profile on MyHeritage, enabling you to discover more about your family history. Your DNA data will be kept private and secure. 

Enhancing your account with DNA results can lead to new discoveries. Soon, MyHeritage will roll out DNA Matching, allowing you to be matched to other people who share DNA with you and are likely related to you. MyHeritage will allow you to review the family trees of your DNA Matches (excluding living people). You will be able to connect with new relatives and collaborate with them. Further down the road, MyHeritage will provide detailed ethnic and geographic origin reports based on DNA.

These features, including the DNA Matching, are currently FREE. 

If you have already done a DNA test on AncestryDNA, 23andMe or FamilyTreeDNA Family Finder, you are invited to export this data, and upload it to MyHeritage in just a few clicks. Your DNA will be matched for free to a very large set of additional people. You'll benefit from MyHeritage's vast international user base of 82 million registered users, plus the 10 million additional registered users on Geni, and get matches you would not receive otherwise. If you upload your DNA data now, you will enjoy DNA Matching for free. This may become a paid feature later on, but it will remain free for users who upload now. 

Click here to access our new DNA upload page. On that page, simple instructions are provided explaining how to export your DNA data from other services, and how to upload it to MyHeritage. Privacy terms are clearly explained, and you may delete DNA data that you've uploaded at any time. 

The new service described here is relevant if you have already tested your DNA. If you have not tested your DNA yet, please review our recommended DNA tests. 

We hope DNA will open new directions for your family history research. 

Have questions? We're happy to help! Call our support team: USA Toll Free 1-877-432-3135 | UK Toll Free +44 80 0098 8125 | Click here for our worldwide contact details. 

Enjoy,
MyHeritage team "

Answer 1

Peter, I will offer exactly this with my new website http://www.dnagenealogy.tools - working closely with WikiTree to avoid for people to have to update family trees in several locations.

The DNA part is done already (please see the website above for details on the features) and WikiTree will be the first option I'm implementing currently to again automatically compare family tree information amongst your proven (by triangulation) DNA cousins.

Gedcom upload will be probably be next on list after WikiTree.

Comments

Andreas, I tried to sign up, but your site wouldn't allow me access.

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Wow wonderful  I am headed that way to look and try to sign up  

thank you so much

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Hi Kay, thanks for your interest and support. The website is currently in close beta, meaning very few people have access.

The reason is that I first need to iron out any potential bugs that is affecting the data structure. Changing them with lots of users is an impossible task and I think no one wants to start anew just because I found a critical bug.

So please bare with me as the customer experience is being fine tuned (I want to avoid a disaster like the "new" 23andme experience). Those who expressed their interest through the form on the landing page will get earlier access when the beta test goes in the last phase and the servers are put to stress test.

Can't say right now when that is but good news is that I'm actively hiring a full-time employee right now to help me out.

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@Mel: thanks for letting me know. Seems I've uploaded a version where the form wasn't working (it didn't close after you pressed the button, right?).

I'm very sorry for this, seems this error happened 3 days ago already :-(

So if anyone here at WikiTree left his details through the form in the last 3 days, please enter them again when you have time. So sorry for the inconvenience.

Once again, thanks for the support!

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Great  resubmitted the form.  I look forward to working in your new site.  Paper trails and trees  I am ok with  DNA and triangulation has me baffled. If this make it user friendly to find triangulations  I will dance in the street  :)  Then again If I could find someone here on WikiTree with enough of a match to try (DNA for Janice Samples Gilbert) I may figure it out.   Though I did find a cousin who I had not seen in 40 years,  I am trying to get her to join WikiTree.  

Thanks again for the hard work you are doing.  Sending you wishes for much joy and luck .

 

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Mel, got yours and Kay's data this time, again sorry for my mistake.

Your words are very encouraging. I'm fulfilling a dream with this website, it's born out of my needs (wanting to verify my family tree, find new relatives, discover unknown stories) and circumstances (not enough time to do dna genealogy).

I've dedicated almost one year of my time so far (it will be a year end of July) and it's an experience that I don't want to miss. I taught myself all the programming language, the knowledge about the NoSQL databases, the cloud hosting, how to design a website in html & CSS.

Even if not many people will be using it (which I hope not) it will give myself the chance to work collaboratively with my DNA cousins on all the mysteries hidden in the past.

But there's a much higher goal that I'd like to reach as well. As you wrote Mel, DNA genealogy isn't easy and especially triangulation. That's why my website is guiding the user through this and thus eliminating the possibility to do an error along the way. Everything is automated as much as possible so we can spend our time solely on looking at the results and working with our DNA cousins on putting the puzzle pieces presented together. Now if I can help just one person who was adopted or even an orphan find their family, then I have reached my ultimate goal.

I hope that my website will also make it a lot easier for many people to start with the fascinating hobby of DNA genealogy, by making it easier to access and get results.

Ok, enough of that and back to work. I guess the more I tell the more the pressure to launch is mounting ;-)

Answer 2

Peter -

FYI - When I last looked at this and checked my 23andme download options I only recall two being available.  The drop down now shows

All DNA
Y DNA
Mitochondrial DNA.

ET

Answer 3

Hi Peter,

Is it because each of the companies (GEDMatch, etc.) need to use your GEDCOM file to run an analysis to check for relatives, and they could not do that without a GEDCOM being available on their own site. There may also be an element of "control", I guess.

It's difficult (I find) to have up-to-date trees on so many sites! It certainly wouldn't hurt to have a link to ancestral trees on WIkiTree.

I'm not sure I've answered your question. Just my thoughts.

Comments

Hi Tamara,

you're going into the right direction. Normally a website would need access to the users family tree data through the form of a file, in Gedcom format.

But there's a second way were applications are exchanging data through a programmable interface, if they decide to make that public.

Not going too much into the technical details, but nowadays more and more companies do that (meaning giving access to functions that do something on their servers for other companies).

Think of using a new mail program and connecting it with your Google or Apple email address. It's something similar to this, it has authentication and it's clear what kind of information is exchanged afterwards (retrieve new emails, send emails etc.). WikiTree is testing this right now as well and I'm pretty sure that's what Peter is referring to.

I think the main reason is cost and time. It's taking a lot of time (and that means cost for developer) to eg integrate another family tree website into your existing application. Then once you have the data, what are you going to do with it? How do you authenticate in the first place. What happens when the user changes data (happens all the time) or you get conflicting data from two different websites with family tree data (let's say WikiTree and FamilySearch.org)?

You see, this is all non trivial and the benefit might be small. In the end every company (and that for sure includes MyHeritage who wants to sell it's subscriptions) needs cousin bait to lure people to their website (and keep them there). For MyHeritage it seems they are now betting on DNA as the newest trend.