Living DNA Members Update - 2021

What a year 2021 has been for the world.

We are really pleased we have been able to release a European panel update, which involved a change to the admixture method. We received great feedback from this method and have been able to refine this further.

The main work has been behind the scenes to support the rapid growth in members and allowing us the ability to re-structure and speed up family networks whilst releasing some features here such as the messaging centre and shared maps.

Some new existing ancestry reports are in the pipeline for release in Q1 2022 so to get ready for these, do ask your family and friends to upload their DNA into the platform.

Let's get into the details

Around 40% of members access Living DNA via their smartphones and tablets. We are proud that we have been able to make improvements to the mobile view of the portal and will continue with this over 2022.

As always we are committed to the security of your data, we have released a more secure way to purchase items within the store as well as adding the long-requested option for Living DNA customers to purchase discounted kits from within their portal.

Family networks is a key feature of the Living DNA product and to anyone researching their personal history. We have been focused on making improvements and additions here to improve the experience for all users from professional genealogists to people who are new to ancestry research.

We have added better ways to visualise and understand your matches and provided a notes section to track this. The messaging centre groups all messages in one single place and means it's easier to see who you have contacted and who you haven't. We’ve made it simpler for new members to opt into the service which has seen an increase in the opt-in rate which means only one thing…..more matches!

You can personalise your matching profile even further by sharing your autosomal map, your known haplogroups and adding a bio.

Finally, we have improved the way we search against matches in our database, making results more accurate and paving the way for future improvements, such as sorting by the newest match.

So what does 2022 bring?

Some people say the skies are the limit, we say let's go beyond - will COVID still be around - we all hope not but that seems unlikely.

With our dynamic team we have our sights set on great things and are focused on some new and strong partnerships to expand our membership base for family matching whilst adding some great new ancestry reports.

Have a safe and COVID-free end of 2021 and start to 2022.