New Ancestry Updates

If you haven’t had a chance to login into Ancestry in the past couple of days, then you may not know that there have been some changes. One that has happened already and another coming in a few days.

The first one I’m going to tell you about is the new Member Profile. I like the cleaner look that it has. Below is the view that I see.
Did you know that by putting a profile photo and a location that you are three times more likely to be contacted? That should be enough reason to sell anyone on the idea.

So I see my name, location, age DNA summary and some of my new matches. The trees that I have and there is a photo gallery and my research interests.

Now when you switch it to see what the public see we see because I didn’t share my DNA summary the view for others doesn’t show that. (You have a choice whether you share your DNA admixture or not.) You only see my name, location, age, the Family Trees, Photo Gallery, and the Research Interests. (See below)

I like the new look, and I may leave out the DNA summary. Not because I don’t want it known but because I think it’s less cluttered this way. Besides if you are my DNA match, you’ll see my ethnicity breakdown because I’ve shared that in the DNA area.

Now for the exciting news. In the next few days Ancestry will be rolling out a new message system.

Here are some of the features you’ll see

• a green dot signifying that a person is online (note to my cousins; I leave Ancestry on most of the time. I’m not ignoring you.)
• Has the look of a conversation on social media rather than an email
• shows that your message has been read (hooray, even knowing that your cousin is ignoring you is information).
• its real time. So if you message and the person you messaged is online, you’ll see their reply right away.
• you’ll be able to see when the person you’re messaging is typing
• you’ll be able to search your messages for names. So you’ll see every instance of a surname for instance.
• emoji support is coming. For now, you can cut and paste

Here’s the downside. If you’re like me, then you have folders for each of the surnames that you correspond on. The new messaging system will not be rolling out to people who have folders. It will eventually, but Ancestry need to figure out how they handle the folders. So it may be 5-6 weeks before us “folder people” get the new messaging system.

You can opt into the new messaging even if you have folders, when it is launched, but keep in mind that once you do that…. there is no turning back. This is not a beta.

I asked Ancestry how they think they will be handling the folders, to see if I really should wait. But they couldn’t say at this point so I’m going to wait and that’s hard for me. LOLOL because I really want to know when my cousin is ignoring me.

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