New Site for DNA Organization!

Question

I just saw in Blaine Bettinger's Genetic Genealogy Tips & Techniques Facebook group that a new DNA match organization feature has been created... Genetic Affairs looks like it's going to be REALLY useful! There is a cost associated, but it's got a 30 day trial and the costs seem reasonable.

It gives you two spreadsheets (ALREADY DONE FOR YOU) per "profile" (each kit you manage) - one with all matches you choose to have them send you (you can sort by level of relationship) and the other is basically an enhanced version of the Leeds method.

I wanted to save y'all some time and energy by sharing this with you so you don't have to do all that work when you don't need to ;) I'm excited to go over mine today, hope y'all find some great info in yours!

Comments

The tool seems to have been presented in the group by the developer, Evert-Jan Blom for the first time today, so there are currently no visible comments or endorsements from people who have tried it. Looks interesting, but hopefully some of the genetic genealogy gurus will soon be offering opinions.

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Yes, I know, that's why I was sharing ;) I decided to try it out and I'm really excited about my first use of it. I have 4 kits running through it right now, two of my own at Ancestry and Family Tree DNA, and two that I manage for other people. If you have questions, please let me know and I'll do my best to answer them :)

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My question is where are they doing those searches? If it's just them searching GEDMatch, FTDNA, etc. for you, then I'd like to know. While that is indeed a service that some are willing to pay for, more transparency would be nice.

Alas, the site is so new my proxy at work is refusing connections ;)

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They go through your DNA matches, pick out those that are higher matches, and that's one spreadsheet. They then go through those that have shared matches, match them to each other using a Leeds-Method-like system, and that's another spreadsheet.

They do this for each "profile" (so if you have an Ancestry DNA kit for you, your parents, and a brother, that's 4 kits, then if you have a FTDNA kit for your grandma that's another kit, etc).

It doesn't yet work on any sites other than Ancestry, FTDNA, and 23&Me at the moment, but I spoke with the developer and he said he has plans to add other sites, but has to work on each one individually since each has it's own quirks that affect development of tools.

Answer 1

I am an avid researcher in genetic genealogy and had not heard of the Genetic Affairs website.  You mentioned that you saw this on Blaine's tips and techniques page, but does he actually endorse this site?

I clicked through to the link that you included to the site and went straight to the pricing.  There is a "pay by credit" system for retrieving new matches in an email.  Right off the bat, I would need to get a very clear sense of why getting new matches in an email would be worth paying for (the clearest pricing structure I saw was 500 credits for $5).

Then - the huge red flag for me is that when I clicked on subscription pricing on the site, I had to have an account to be able to log in to see the subscription pricing, and I am not about to sign up for a site just so that I can see its subscription price.  I am very wary of any subscription-base service that is not completely transparent about its pricing and the exact services that you receive for your monthly? payment.  A recurring monthly payment can be very expensive, especially as the months go by.

There needs to be a very clear value proposition if a site is going to charge money - especially if it is a monthly subscription.

Comments

I'm not sure he does endorse it as it was a post made by a member, not him. That doesn't really mean anything though. The pricing structure seems clear to me. It's impossible for them to be completely clear since they have so many variables (how many kits, how often you want updates for each profile, etc).

From their page:

Our service is based on a fee per search for a single profile. It is possible to obtain updates every month,week and day. For each of these intervals a different fee is applied:

Monthly updates cost 18 credits per profile search
Weekly updates cost 9 credits per profile search
Daily updates cost 3 credits per profile search.

Credits can be purchased via single payments (for instance; a single payment of 5 dollar will give you 500 credits) or via monthly subscriptions. The latter are available on the subscription page. In addition, these monthly subscriptions yield 10% additional credits (e.g., a monthly subscription of 10 dollar corresponds with 1000 credits + 100 bonus credits = 1100 credits).

For me the major benefit is that they do the comparisons of cousins FOR YOU. Work that took me DAYS per kit, is now done. For 4 kits.

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It means something in that the wording of your original post gives the indication of endorsement which can give a misleading view of the status of the tool. Anyone can post a new tool on his facebook group and as I pointed out yesterday this one is newly released. Fine to invite people to try it, but not so good to give the impression that it is tried and tested and approved. The idea for the tool is good. It surprised me that it does not seem to have been released in beta mode for people to give feedback before applying the complicated pricing structure.

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No one where in the original post does it say it was endorsed nor does it give that impression.  It's simply information that you can choose to act on or not. My impression was that Janette found a new tool that could accomplish some work quickly and was excited to share it.

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Yes, exactly Tannis, thank you :) Just sharing to save people time and frustration. Not trying to imply anything other than it's useful for me and may be useful for others.

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Hey Janette -

I clicked on the subscription page that you linked to, but again, you have to register for an account just to get subscription information.  I refuse to do this, and as I said before, I see it as a huge red flag when a site requires that a person must create an account in order to receive subscription pricing.

Also, I'm sorry, but I'm not following what you mean by "comparisons of cousins."  I understand the so-called "Leeds method", which I would argue should be called the "Kitty Cooper method," since Kitty Cooper has been grouping shared DNA segments by color at least back to 2013:  http://blog.kittycooper.com/2013/06/building-a-color-coded-chromsome-mapping-tool/  But I digress...

While this is nice visual tool, the "Leeds method" is very basic, as it merely groups shared matches groups by color-coding in a spreadsheet.  While this is a helpful first step, in my opinion, the real work and the real benefit of studying shared matches in genetic genealogy comes from looking across the family trees of the testers in various shared matches groups to identify possible common ancestors, shared geographic locations, surnames that could possibly fit between testers' trees, and so on.  

Again, the color-coded spreadsheet is a nice tool, but I just don't see the value in paying a website to form shared matches groups - much less to pay this website a monthly subscription for this.

In comparison, for example, I donate $10 per month to Gedmatch.com because the site offers analytical tools that are not available elsewhere (particularly with respect to being able to compare tests from across companies).  The $10 that I donate each month goes toward the upkeep of the site and the significant computer resources that are needed to operate these tools.  

Also, the Gedmatch site is transparent about this subscription amount, and directly makes its Tier One analytical tools available only to subscribers.

I need to see a value proposition along this lines - i.e how much the monthly subscription costs for the new site in relation to what exactly this website provides before I would even consider this.  If all the site does is send me emails adding new matches to a color-coded "Leeds" shared matches spreadsheet, I just can't see paying for this service (much less committing to a monthly subscription).

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I’m having a really rough day with my kids so I’m going to just come out and say this and get it over with  If you’re not interested, that’s fine. This post is not for you. So please, move on. I’m not the developer or a salesperson or anyone with a vested interest in making you want this tool, so I’m not going to try to explain why it’s awesome for you. It’s obviously not. I’ve got a ton of things to do, I’m having a bad day, and I really just want to end this thread. Have a nice weekend from here on out! No hard feelings, just done with this thread.

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OK.  Noted.  Moving on.....

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As you know, the hardest part of a  project is thinking of a new, original topic. Since you are interested in DNA or sequencing, I suggest going to the "CD GENOMICS" link at the bottom of this page and search for "DNA or sequencing." This will bring up a list of possible project ideas. Look through the ideas and the bibliography until you find something that looks interesting. You can also do an internet search on your specific areas of interest to find sites that will give you more ideas. For example, here's a site on cat sequencing that looks interesting:https://www.cd-genomics.com/complete-plasmid-dna-sequencing.html