It is time to cancel and re-invite all your closest anonymous matches at 23andme, letting them know that this is their last chance. After November 11 they will disappear from your relative lists as will all your pending introductions. Anonymous users will no longer be allowed to participate in DNA relatives. They can change their status in settings. Warning, if you are using a nickname rather than a real sounding name or initials, your profile will automatically be changed to anonymous (this does not include the nickname you had to specify for posting to forums). This proviso is still a little unclear to me, presumably when you are switched to the new 23andme, you can make changes to your profile then.
Another big change is that Countries of Ancestry is going away ,so download that spreadsheet now.
The good news is that the cap of 1000 matches is being raised to 2000. Also another good thing is that you can set yourself to “Open Sharing” which lets other open sharers compare matching DNA segments to you without the cumbersome introduction system
23andme has provided a page that maps old features to new (click here or on the image above):
A number of bloggers have written detailed posts on the changes coming to 23andme. Here are several good ones. You can also click here for the thread in the community section at 23andme.
Blogger Reports:
Shannon Christmas: http://throughthetreesblog.tumblr.com/post/131724191762/the-23andme-metamorphosis
Judy Russell: http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/2015/10/25/the-changes-at-23andme/
Roberta Estes: http://dna-explained.com/2015/10/21/23andme-to-get-a-makeover-after-agreement-with-fda/
Now to get back to cancelling and sending my new last chance messages!
Interesting…I didn’t realize that they would disappear. I find some of the largest matches I have have not or will not respond.
In some respects it will decrease the aggravation if they are just gone. That said, I hate to lose the opportunity to further my family research, so I will as you put it make one last attempt to get them to respond….
Thanks for the heads up on this.
Dennis
This Worked………I re-invited perhaps 25 persons and only 1 responded, BUT, he happened to be my largest single match on 23&me….
I had been trying to get a hold of him for quite some time. I guess it was the wording of the new message explaining that if he didn’t respond before Nov 11 it would be too late and we would likely lose contact forever……
He just wasn’t very active on 23&me. Once he understood that we were certainly connected in some way he got back to me…We share 2nd Great Grandparents……I have made available to him my years of research, so he has a good start on his own research project from now on.
Thanks for the idea.
Thanks for this blog—I didn’t realize so much would change ….
I don’t understand this “Last time to send my 23andme invitations”. I have tried to hook up with a few in the past, but only one replied. I’m in the process of trying to compare notes .
Frank, You can cancel previous invitations and then resend new “Last chance” one
Help! With my current status, will I be able to participate in all the 23andme system changes coming up, or are there additional moves I have to make, to update my status?
Thx, Frank.
Frank
My understanding is that when you first log in after your account has been transitioned you will have the option to opt out of finding relatives and stay anonymous or use your real name and agree to the new terms and be involved in the new relatives list.
There is a long community thread here and this page of it discusses some of that:
https://www.23andme.com/you/community/thread/41003/10/
You may want to be sure that your profile name is a real name and is set so all members can see it.
Kitty
Thank you for posting!
For the past week have been deleting requests for matches who have not responded adding a note about the last chance for replying and it got some results. One person declined and some matches responded. Seemed to help. On Nov. 12th all those with no name still appear but without the option to send an invite to accept contact. If you click on their info there is an option to send a message, just not the canned phrase options.
Since we can still see them it might be worth a try to contact them “manually”
I did that very thing and it worked for some. there was one who declined, which does happen. But the results was getting some to reply, have exchanged messages.
Now the option to send invites is gone, but you can keep notes for them, just cannot send them messages! Too bad!
the number of distant cousins has gone down a few people.
When will the new features be available to Canadian testers?
Sorry Mary, ask over at 23andme, I do not know. Most (maybe all?) of us V3 folk have not transitioned yet. I have cousins who sent results in last June and they are v4 and so did transtion and that is where I experiment with the new 23andme