MyHeritage -- Snaps Up Geni.com

RE: The current flood of accepted match notifications on the home page:

I imagine that will decrease within days as more and more matches are accepted. It reminds me of when Geni introduced Plus/Pro and we suddenly had a *ton* of merges going on every minute, causing the tree to shrink dramatically and then start to expand again as things stabilized. In those first few days, my home page was pretty much nothing but "______ completed a merge on X" notifications; now, I see them far less frequently. In hindsight, it was minor growing pains, though it felt enormous at the time.

Smart Match and Record Match have only been live for everyone for a matter of hours, so I suspect that within a couple of weeks (or even days?), we won't be seeing notifications much anymore at all.

hmmm again, the reason for the "blue dot" disaster is very simple: MH-Geni wants to make more money. Most of the times you hit the blue button there is a MH-ad to become a member. However - behind the blue button there is mostly nonsense and/or redundant information.

I was trapped by MH years ago to upload parts of my tree and now I have 200 and some blue dots...forget about the thousands of blue dots in different relationships. These blue dots will not vanish by itsself or by other users.

I WANT A BUTTON TO TURN ON/OFF THE BLUE MATCHES:

These "smart matches" have one simple reason: to get more users to pay for rather irrelevant information. Bad business idea.

I totally agree with you Gerhard , "These "smart matches" have one simple reason: to get more users to pay for rather irrelevant information. Bad business idea."

Hasn't been irrelevant for me. In fact, it's been very relevant, accurate, and extremely useful. While they may be annoying for you, the technology is a significant advancement for genealogy research and collaboration.

You'll soon be able to exclude your tree on MyHeritage from matching your Geni profiles. If your email address is the same, it should probably exclude it now.

Gerhard : ja det ønsker jeg

fjernelse af disse blå faldskærme

Gerhard: "These "smart matches" have one simple reason: to get more users to pay for rather irrelevant information. Bad business idea."

But from MyH point of view it is, of course, a smart business idea. MyH would like to get rid of Geni and try to use all they can think of to solve that problem of theirs. They seem to be short of thoughts of how to solve the Geni-cusomers problems. Sad but true.

Agneta Åhrberg, MH is not trying to get rid of Geni. They are not merging Geni profiles into MH. Please stop spreading disinformation. Read the blog post, read the FAQ.
* http://www.geni.com/blog/introducing-record-matches-and-smart-match...
* http://help.geni.com/forums/21882243-Record-Matches-Smart-Matches

Jeff! Don't answer me as if I'm spreading disinformation (it's like saying I'm a lier).

Well during the last year, since MyH bought Geni, I've been waiting for certain developments on Geni. Calmfully. How is Geni planning to take care of what has been done and whats there, which is really different compared to all other geneaological sights?

*There was the change into basic-users could feel free to use Geni as before the Basic-era.
*The Life-timers could feel free to get lifetime changed into 5 years and with the same possibilities as Basic users
*Everyone could feel free to buy MyH-place for their tree
* And now this with "Smart Matches™"

I could agree there might be some more findings but as I'm still a paying customer on Geni I cannot say I feel thankful or anything but irritated on that if I check theese "Smart Matches™" I'm also offered to start paying on MyH.

As for the needed developments on/within Geni I have seen none. (The huge problems with old profiles kept as private is rather worse nowadays). And on theese "Smart Matches™" a can se there is not only 1-2 duplicates from Geni but up til four on the profiles I've checked.

Today I have tried to work with a prominent swedish family and do some clean up, so to "get space" for a new profile with family. I started to check "Data-conflicts". It was 2. None of them at all connected to the family in question at all. (But two dataconflicts that are in my former husbands part of the Tree, where I have decided not to involve at all. But I know for sure he and his relatives are not at all invovlved with the family I worked with).

Thank you for the 50 minutes of reading -link. And please don't do what you tell me not to do.

Agneta Åhrberg, maybe I misunderstood you. In your prior post you stated they were trying to merge Geni profiles into MH profiles, which is not true. Then you said here that MH would like to get rid of Geni, which is not true. Just don't want you to confuse people.

If you have followed me a little bot on the discussions you must have understood that I'm not a person who try "to confuse people". Rather the opposite, as my my friends says.

As far as I can se out from the profiles i "have" on MyH they ought to be 0 (zero) as I'm not a customer on MyH. But if I now check "Smart Matches™" between Geni and MyH i get information i have to many profiles on MyH. How cme?? I have no agreements at all with MyH.

I'm used to have possible "matches" on Geni and could say yes or no and if yes I can maybe merge. Doing so geni get rid of duplicates, other users could start cooperate with me and we can work on the World Tree-Idea. But what with the "Smart Matches™" that are not aimed to be merged? What are the purpose of match-proposals that are not dedicated to get merged at all? Not even refused as possible matches!

And in the top of my screen is the sign about how many to many profiles I have on MyH for not being a paying customer.

Maybe it's a cultural misunderstanding between us, Jeff. But so far I have heard nothing from either Geni or from MyH about how to solve the genealogical problems I have. But rather the border seems to try to solve their problem with customers like me. It's different points of views. Not only culture.

Jeff, it seems to be your task to keep up the companies reputation. That's ok but geni could also involve the members (and there are many power users) in the SW development ideas. The "blue dots" are simply created to generate more business. However, the older problems e.g. with dead members and 300 year old private corpses have never been of any interest for the company because it simply would not generate income. Geni is NOT a dead people's facebook ....otherwise a shitstorm would already have killed you.

A box in the "display" menue ON/OFF is all I want in order to get rid of the annoying MyH - advertising.

Why not simply let us know that you could imagine a slight SW change with a box where you could choose: "blue box" on/off ?

By the way- I am a 5 year member and when my subscription will expire I will store my data in Utah's familysearch. I am not a mormon but I think their new project is very promising. Give Noah Tutak my best regards. He might never become the internet-billionaire with or without green/blue or red dots. How many cents does he you earn per "blue-dot"-click?

(No Name), not my job, just defending what I think is due. Curators are working on the 300 year old private profiles and Geni recently gave curators some new tools to fix them. So if you still have some in your tree, please let us know. Post here: http://www.geni.com/discussions/80793

As for the on/off, I can't help there. I'm sure Geni is noting the feedback.

Agneta Åhrberg, I think you misunderstand what the matches are and what those figures are. Geni has not copied any of your profiles to MyHeritage. If you see a match, it is because someone else created a tree over there with similar family profiles. The intent of Smart Matches, which is only half of the service, is to give you an additional resource for sourcing, documenting, and building your tree. Usually when someone is building a tree, they search the web (or Ancestry searches) for online trees that have their family members in them. They then use that information, review the sources, expend their tree based on that information. This is what smart matches does, but you don't have to search for it, it comes to you. You add a person to your tree, and SM says.. hey, here are online trees (to include MH) that have that same person. Maybe you can gain something useful in looking at their tree. You can then confirm it is a match, which links it to the profile for future review, sourcing, collaboration or in the future an new records that may get added in that other tree can be mirror here on the world family tree.

Jeff, I must say I'm a bit surprised that Geni, or MyH, computer staff or economic staff has any problem at all to in less than 30 minutes change all profiles dead more than 70 years ago into public profiles.

In Greece they have "some economical problems" today. The rest of Europe and the world try to help them solve the problems. I think it was danish people who within less than a few days, helped the adminstrators of the system to find about 20 000 dead and burried pensionists who got monthly payments. I'm a proud sweed and I say nothing but "Good job made by the danish computer staff". We, on this side of the Atlantic ocean, have heard some nice things about the "Silicon Valley" and their abilities. It would be nice to se some of the effects also.

Agneta, ya it gets into those areas of no dates on the profile or surrounding profiles, private profiles, counting generations, etc. Then they have some defaults that should be fixed, which should default to deceased. Anyway.. I've felt the pain - Zombies were no fun for anyone. They should be getting scarce though. Curators do a massive amount of work in the world tree.

Agneta - dead more than 70 years ago can still be in someone's privacy zone (back to 3rd great-grandparent, out to 4th cousin) - in which case it should still be Private unless the Manager and Family chooses to have it Public.

I'm not going to live long enough to rid myself of all those annoying and for the most part useless blue dots!

Well Diane, here is an idea. How much for a new Lifetime Membership for not showing the blue dots?

HAHAHA!! Geni will never get one more cent from me.

Dear Diana, with your - maybe - 10 000 blue dots you might need at least three Lifetime Memberships. I got today the message from geni: "we are excited to announce....." I am not excited at all because all of the blue dots I have checked are useless, redundant and simply an image of the incompetence and greed of the MyH & Geni management.
Did you already become a member of MyHeritage ?
I agree with your HAHAHA"!

I already found some relatives who I do not have in my tree and I have a huge tree on Geni. What you will find is branches where you didn't know that a sibling married and had children, but their descendants are on MH and have a tree. It's very exciting when you make those finds.

That's above and beyond the records such as the 1940 Census and death and birth records which are an important part of doing genealogy and critical to having a World Tree that is correct and sourced.

Gerhard...I found 99% to be useless. My tree is nearing 40,000 so it may take me a bit to look them all over which I probably won't do. It is a waste of my time for the 1 or 2 1940's census that I've not caught up on. I find some info to be Find-a- Grave profiles that I created!! How redundant is that?
When Geni took my lifetime membership I was offered the My Heritage subscription. I have used it once to contact a family member that I found all the way in California. I find MyHeritage difficult to use.
When I read from Geni "we are excited" it is never good for me...

Gerhard, so because the small amount of dots you checked were useless and redundant, that must mean they're all useless? I've found extreme value in them. Your situation could be due to many things and it could change with new additions, refinements, and records. What do you know to call their staff incompetent and greedy?! Those of us that actually know these people will say the direct opposite and your words are insulting.

I am not finding the blue dots to be useless at all. I have a pretty well filled in tree, and I am finding new info every hour with the new Record and Smart Matches. One of the matches was to a gravestone photo of my great grandmother that I had never seen. I was well aware of the website where the photo was, but had never tried to search it for that particular person before.

It is literally impossible for me to Google search/search MH/seach Findagrave etc daily, weekly or even once a year for everyone in the my family tree file. I could not even search one site for all my names yearly manually. The time saved by having Geni/MH automatically search for me and let me know likely matches is invaluable to me.

I realize that right now the number of potential matches ("Blue dots") seems insanely high, but there are many other Geni users working on them as well. This is the strength of a collaborative genealogy site like Geni.

Think of it like a library. When you enter a library there are tens of thousands of books, right? All those books are like potential "blue dots" of knowledge. No one expects you to read them all, and certainly not in one day! You can look at the one or two you want right then, and someday if you want a different one you can return and look in that section of the library.

Adding sources to profiles is very important! Aftering attaching/confirming a record such as a SSDI entry, it wont need to be done again, and will disappear as a "blue dot" to everyone. And when people look at the profile they will be able to see evidence supporting the data in the profile. This will allow us to better resolve data conflicts, and build the World Tree.

Try to be patient, and see how things are looking in a few days, I think you will have a different opinion on the new Record and Smart Matching.

Jeff......I've found it very difficult to work with the Geni staff that I have been in touch with. I've actually leaned on a curator to help me with some problems. He made the contacts with the staff and got things rolling for me when I alone could get nowhere.
I don't dare express my actual feeling as I know I'd be thrown out for expressing an opinion. I've already been banned from their facebook page because I said what I felt. I used no profanity or other language that would be found unacceptable.
I've looked through info from many "blue dots" and have found lots that I already knew, very little new to me and some that is incorrect and I can prove it. My advice would be to take the My Heritage profiles with caution.

Private User I entered a profile this morning and got a smart match which had her parents and one other child so it does work.

It is not just My Heritage where you have to use caution. Lots of bad data out there.

I take ALL profiles - including my own - with caution!

I just had to cut myself off from a line I had believed for two years to be correct. I had sourced with Vital Records, I had scoured discussion boards, on line trees, and ruined my eyesight squinting into 1890s descendant google books.

Well guess what - John Hadden / Heden / Heiden who married Elizabeth, son Samuel, does not equal John Hayden / Haydon / Hadden who married Elizabeth, son Samuel.

I'm sure we all have genealogy stories like this. How did you get your tree corrected?

Indeed, I do take all online trees with caution. They're a questionable resource in some cases, but often they can be extremely helpful. That's part of the mission of Geni is to find the best documentation and a single tree, sometimes you need to look at other trees to compare, contrast, research, source. Instead of searching online, posting links, this new technology does the searching for you and brings the matches to you. I find it absolutely amazing and a huge time saver. Documentation likewise with record matches. I can't tell you how many great FindAGrave pics and Death Indexes it has uncovered for me.

Please do feel free to work with the curators. We can address a lot of the issues quickly. We also monitor the community help forum.

Could not agree more strongly with Erica and Jeff! I, too, just found a "bad" granch that I'm going to have to chop off, <sob>! lol It happens no matter how careful we are, as genealogy by its very nature is speculative...

And I find the new matching absolutely incredible. What a powerful tool - and I'm sure they're not done with it, I can see that it's only going to become more powerful in future! I was very upset about the merge with MyHeritage, as I didn't see any value at the time, but now I need to publicly say I've changed my mind. MyHeritage and Geni are well on their way to becoming a powerhouse partnership!

JMHO, yada yada yada!

*granch = branch

lol