MyHeritage -- Snaps Up Geni.com

Under "Geni Premium Account", where it used to say that I had a Lifetime Geni Pro Membership, it then changed to saying (true as of 12/15/2012) that "You are Geni Pro. Your 5-Year ($417.00) subscription will automatically renew on Thursday, December 7, 2017. " However, as Charles said above would happen, that has also been changed.

Now it says: "Your Geni Plus account subscription is set to expire on Thursday, December 7, 2017. Reactivate your Geni Plus subscription now" -- With no guarantee at all of what the price will be then!!
Wondering - if I chose to "Reactivate" - does this extend the expiration date out to 2022 if done now? And if so, what are the implications of this for Geni's claim/implication they can only provide Lifetime Subscribers with a 5-Year Membership?
If not, then what does it mean / what happens if you do it (is the money just lost or ??)?

Bruce, this may explain a bit why we have reason to complain.

Most of us paid less for our Lifetime Membership than the current 5-Year Membership costs (and heaven only knows what the membership prices may go up to) -- so we are facing a major financial loss / hit if we continue for any length of time with Geni - even with a refund of whatever it was we paid.
--- Also, since Geni apparently Grandfathers folks in at whatever price they originally pay if they choose automatic renewal -- we will end up paying more than we would have if we had chosen a different membership category (other than Life, and with automatic renewal).

Jaak Tulp,

To avoid speculation I would like to make it clear from the start: viewing most historical records will NOT be free on Geni, NOR will they be a benefit of Pro subscriptions. Just like they are not a benefit of Premium or PremiumPlus subscriptions on MyHeritage. They require a separate data subscription. That data subscription costs less than 25% of the equivalent subscription on Ancestry.

HOWEVER, matching and access to SOME of the historical record collections WILL be given free, for example records from Find-A-Grave, so all Geni users will soon receive free automatic matches with tens of millions of tombstone photos and burial information and will be able to save that information into the world family tree and enhance its quality. Pro subscriptions are in no need of any compensation. They are NOT entitled to receive historical records, which they had never received in the past. It costs TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS to license, transcribe and develop historical records, and it costs MILLIONS OF DOLLARS to apply the engineering efforts required to bring them to users, and no company can provide all this for free to all the users or to users who had paid for something else in the past.

I hope this sets the right expectation and will help to avoid any future surprise. That said, we are very excited about the roadmap we have for adding historical records to Geni and expect that users who do choose to purchase a data will find a great deal of value in the records and the integration that we have planned.

-Noah

Noah... while it is your opinion that Pro subscriptions are in no need of compensation, how do you justify giving away a benefit for free to basic users? Also, why am I no longer able to download full GEDCOM. My ability to download is based on some random idea more profiles is better than quality profiles. I suppose my thoughts aren't important in this discussion as apparently you folks have it all figured out already.

Hi Beth,

We always reserve the right to make features that are part of a paid subscription free to all users. In fact, the features that are part of our Pro subscription have changed a number of time over the years. I don't think it is reasonable to insist that we will never make a feature that is part of a subscription plan free to all users. That is very limiting and would make it very difficult for us to add anything new to our subscription plans, knowing that we could never again make it available to all users.

I'm interested in hearing more about your GEDCOM issues. It looks like you have added 334 profiles to the tree. Even if you were not a Pro user, you should have no problem exporting all of these profiles as a GEDCOM. In fact, you should be able to export a 3,340 person GEDCOM. Is this not working for you?

-Noah

Noah Tutak Thank you for the explanation. The data subscription has questionable value for me. I guess i have the possibility to find a record in Find-A-Grave for free, i guess i will find US Census records for free with or without MH data subscription. If access to Ancestry.com data were part of the myheritage data subscription and record matches then i would really think of purchasing it when it costs even a little less than original Ancestry.com subscription. If i pay for something then i would expect, that i have some value of it. If i have to pay more having MH data subscription to get access to Ancestry records then i would buy Ancestry.com subscription rather than having the MH data subscription. What use do i have of just looking at headers of found records, but not being able to see the document? I understand that the licensing and developing costs lots of money, but the result should be such that if people buy the subscription in order to find some valuable data and they find it and still have to pay more to view it.

One more thing. It is the strange thing that for a period free users were only allowed to add 100 profiles in the tree and also assuming they are in isolated tree. Now if these free users have been away for a long period and still think that they have to be in the separate tree so they can use up their right to add the 100 profiles and decline any merge with the big tree. Now even being merged with the big tree and if they wanted to export their tree they get only up to 1000 profiles in their GEDCOM.

I just think that the majority of frustration and dissatisfaction is caused because of such twitching and unreasoned (for users) changing of features being part of the subscription. People want to do their work and develop their tree in a STABLE environment.

Leaves more questions.
Quote of Naah Tutak:
"To avoid speculation I would like to make it clear from the start: viewing most historical records will NOT be free on Geni, NOR will they be a benefit of Pro subscriptions."
Unquote.
Does that mean, that pro-subscriber's access to the world tree will be reduced?
- Sorry, but English isn't my first language ;-)

I did n't understand it too, Asked myself the same question...

Concering this quote: There is nothing about access of users with PRO subscription to world tree. It is about historical records that are mostly not free for anyone, except MH data subscribers who see some of the records (which are IMHO free anyway)

Sorry, but the world tree is loaded with historical profiles. Just look at the Scandinavia part, and the UK one. We have access far way back from the Danish wikings.
The question must be - will that access be locked in the future for the pro-subscribers?

An example of a historical profile from Scandinavia:
Harald I "Fairhair", king of Norway
Harald I Halvdansson «Fairhair» Hårfagre is your 30th great grandfather.

One thing is historical profiles, another one is historical records. There is no limitation to add historical profiles. The access to databases where these historical profiles could be found will be added and this is not free.

It's not about adding but about watching those profiles with data in the world tree..

Jaak Tulp thank you for your response. There will be one data subscription, just as their is on MyHeritage, that will allow you to view historical records. There won't be one subscription to search and another to view records. You won't have to pay more to then view the records.

I would suggest that you wait until you see our implementation and the collection of records, which continues to grow with new records from around the world being added all the time, before decide if this is valuable to you. You'll be able to decide for yourself in the next month or two.

And, as you correctly pointed out, by historical records I do not mean Geni profiles or the Geni World Family Tree.

I expect that, now that we are part of the MyHeritage family, that changed of the type that you mention will be much less frequent. We are trying to do a good job of letting users know that we have made unlimited node adding and merging free. In fact, we are working on a new email that will let such users know that they have pending merges that they can now complete for free, and emphasize ones that will merge their tree into the World Family Tree.

Henny, Jaak, Jennie

I think you all have different 1st languages where English is your 2nd so you're a great test group. :)

Is there a confusion between the terms

"records"
"profiles"

Is there a way to make it clearer?

As i understand it... a "record" is information about some kind of historical person that is written down in some kind of document. "profile" is what you create here in Geni to express the record you have found in the big tree with relations to other profiles (also found from historical records). Is it clear enough or should i ask a philologist to help? :)

:-) I had to ask George to explain, dunno why I confused records and profiles. I just think the whole txt was a bit too much for me to wrap it in my head :-).
Sometimes it is difficult to understand everything in an English text not being English. I was concentrating so much to understand that I missed the word "records" and read it as "profiles".
Well it is difficult to only read such things in another language than your own,

Noah - your participation in this discussion is very helpful. Thank you!

Is the difference between Geni Pro and Basic intended to continue to be just in regard to searching, matching and storage? If that is the case, it is positive for both Pro and Basic users, because Pro users also benefit from the work Basic users do on building the tree and correcting relationships.

One other thing that Basic users were never allowed to do is break a relationship that will split the tree. I haven't seen that listed as a current difference. Nor have I seen anything to say that has changed. Could you (or perhaps Mike Stangel) confirm is this restriction still the case - and if so is that intended to remain a difference - and what would be the rationale?

The profiles ends up to be a record, Jaak Tulp. With documents enclosed and text in the About Me.
- But as I now understand Noah Tutak it will all be visible for us to watch as it is now.

Noah Tutak . Before the GEDCOM limitation I could download much heaftier set of records - not based on some whimsical multiplication table utilizing the number of profiles that I have added. This definition seems somewhat whimsical as folks that willy nilly add profiles (and there are so many out there that do - without trying to do any research to make sure what they are adding is correct. ) are allowed to dowload a larger GEDCOM. I've said it before and so now I'll just say it again, I know that benefits of membership change. I'm just making an observation that your core users don't see much benefit with the My Heritage merger yet. For now I'm not doing much on Geni as I would like to get a better idea of where this goes. Geni has helped me tremendously in my family research, but it is VERY cumbersome to add profiles and source data... so I want to make sure that things are all good here (still VERY unhappy about the change in privacy for our immediate family.) And that's the way it is :)

OK, Henny! I might agree with you, but records without relationships to other records are not a family tree. Thats why in Geni we call the records profiles. Isn´t that so? Profile (the box in tree mode containing information) without source information is not a record. Profiles that are historical, but private (which they shouldn´t be) are not visible to everyone. I guess we all should know that. The public one´s are visible to anyone.

David - we don't intend to make any changes to Pro or Plus benefits in the near future, including the ability to break relationships.

Beth - I'm glad Geni has been helpful and that you are keeping an open mind. My goal then is to prove that the merger is a good thing for you!

I don't understand the reasons behind keeping a profile private for a person deceased for over 150 years. Is there going to be a change on this occurence ? Thanks.

The reason is that people want to keep control over who is able to merge the profile(s) they manage. Any PRO and now even a free user can complete a merge between public profiles. If it is a private profile then the range of people who is able to complete the merge is limited by family group and it is easier to track who might have screwed up if anything goes wrong. So the problem is about lack of trust.

Noah Tutak,
Nice to see you here! We are 13th cousins, once removed! I was hoping you would join the conversation. I am trying to keep an open mind as well. I have loved working on my family tree on Geni. My favorite part it collaborating and find branches that I would have otherwise never discovered. I admit though I am still upset about my lifetime membership not being honored. I have appreciated the attempt at making it up to lifetime members by adding the data membership and offering a refund. It's not quite the same. I'm not 40 yet and a lifetime on geni to me is hopefully 40+ years....so 40 vs. 5 years is an enormous difference. Is there any way you would reconsider taking away our lifetime memberships?
Jill

Jill, that is exactly why My Heritage doesn't honor lifetime membership... They can charge you 8 more times in your life. Even if they refund all lifetime memberships + data membership, they will make profit on that.

Noah Tutak,

I am also a member of Myheritage. Hopefully you will not merge the two systems. I never use Myheritage. I find Myheritage unworkable and notuser friendly at all. Will Geni stay thje same after the take over? If Geni is integrated into the same system as Myheritage, you can count me out.
Regards,
Leon van Schalkwyk

I know this is very hard to accept, but believe me if you knew what you are talking about then your tone would be significantly different. I found it also unrespectful and even criminal in the beginning, but i have a pretty good knowledge about marketing and business and begun to understand. A company must do what is necessary to be able to develop itself. For example if you have bought a CRT monitor and wish that it had lifetime warranty then we never have had LCD and plasma displays now. Maybe not very good comparison, but you'll get the idea.

You put it perfectly Jaak, "Maybe not very good comparison" - definately not!

Jaak.....I'm not sure about the "if you knew what you are talking about" either. Could you be more degrading?