This answer was moved to this area in response to requests from the staff at Quora. It was originally intended as a rebuttal to people arguing against the use of DTC services. Hopefully my story finds a better home here.

I only wish that the service offered by 23andMe had been available nine years ago when my daughter, who was two years old at the time, suddenly became very lethargic, inattentive, and susceptible to frequent bouts of vomiting and stomach pain. My wife and I took her to a GP who was unable to diagnose the problem. We were referred to a gastroenterologist (GI) who went through months of tests and varying hypotheses ranging from fecal impaction to poor diet. We went to a second GI who said the same thing. None of their treatments appeared to work.

My wife and I continued to research our daughter's symptoms and eventually noticed that they correlated with Celiac Disease. We asked the GI whether this could be the case, but were politely told that Celiac was very unlikely and not to worry about it. But we did not accept the answer and searched for physicians knowledgeable in Celiac Disease in the DC area. We were surprised to find that one of the world's leading experts on Celiac Disease was practicing at University of Maryland - Baltimore, a few miles up the road from DC. Dr. Alessio Fasano agreed to screen our entire family with a recently developed antibody test.

My daughter tested positive but the rest of us (me, my wife, and son) came up negative. We were shocked. How could this happen? No one in either of our extended families had been diagnosed with this disease. Why did it affect our daughter and not us?

After dealing with the shock we put our daughter on a gluten-free diet and her response was immediate. The lethargy waned and her distended stomach eventually disappeared. She has remained on a GF diet ever since. Unfortunately every now and then she accidentally eats a non-GF food and suffers from vomiting or intense stomach pains immediately thereafter.

When I received my 23andMe results six months ago, I was surprised to see that my DNA had a higher proclivity to Celiac Disease (rs2187668=CT) than the average person/reference genome. My likelihood of having Celiac Disease was 3.35X more likely than the average person. In fact, Celiac was the disease I was most likely to contract within the MyHealth section of 23andMe.

So if I had had these results nine years ago, I might have saved my daughter a lot of suffering and pain by demanding that the GP or GI conduct an antibody given my genotype and her symptoms. She went through a lot of costly and unnecessary medical treatments and tests over the course of the five months we were trying to diagnose her problem.

I have discussed this with some friends and recently learned that a coworker's GP and orthopedist failed to detect early rheumatoid arthritis. The MD thought it was carpal tunnel syndrome or other overuse injury instead of doing tests for RA. This went on for years. Consequently the person ended up suffering irreparable joint damage before being put on a methotrexate prescription. Fortunately they have responded well to the treatment but their joint damage is permanent. That person recently received their results from 23andMe and their DNA showed a much higher proclivity towards RA. They wish they had had that data years ago.

So thank you 23andMe for putting critical information in the hands of people that are most incentivized to do something with it. While I agree there are concerns about how this information should be used, I have clearly seen the potential benefits from having unrestricted access to my own genetic data. Given my experience, I don't want my physician or my insurance company to become the arbiter in deciding whether I should get such a test. Let me decide whether the relatively low cost of such a test is worth the value.

I did 23andMe genetic mapping in 2010 when they had a $99 special. Since then I have often said that it was the best $99 I ever spent, and coincidentally, $99 is now the new regular pricing for 23andMe. I see benefits in 5 areas:

1. Directly-actionable health-related information: I have made several lifestyle modifications as a result of what I learned about myself from 23andMe, and for some people their 23andMe results can be life-saving. A classic example is HH, hereditary hemochromatosis, "a common autosomal recessive condition found in the homozygous state in 1/200–1/400 people of northern-, central-, and western-European origin." In vernacular terms, HH caused the underlying condition that killed Ernest Hemingway and several of his relatives, as well as my own father-in-law.

My wife has been suffering from HH for years and because of that I have spent a lot of time researching it (Disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor, although I bet I know more about HH than your average general practitioner). When you read the stories that HH sufferers post on the Facebook page I created (Fighting Hemochromatosis) you can see that diagnosis of this "iron overload" condition is problematic in many countries, including America.

When the genetic test for HH was first discovered some doctors were in favor of universal testing, but fears of genetic discrimination and other concerns scuppered that idea in favor of iron-related blood tests. However, iron was dropped from standard bloodwork in America shortly thereafter. That meant a previously effective means of spotting the condition was lost. Now doctors have to give a reason for requesting an iron panel and if they don't spot the other signs of HH you could go undiagnosed. Knowing you have the genetic defect gives you, and your doctor, a reason to get your iron levels checked; not to mention a chance to modify lifestyle and diet to avoid the toxic effects of iron overload.

Will everyone who tries 23andMe get immediately actionable medical information like people with HH? No. But I think the number who do is higher than some detractors suggest.

2. Future knowledge: As Venkatesh Rao says in his answer "I expect the results will get more interesting over time." I find this very exciting. The more people try 23andMe, and the more research 23andMe does with the data , the more we will learn about ourselves, and human health. Consider the genetic finding that some people are less affected by caffeine than others. What if this correlated to the presence of a genetic defect like HH? One might be able to formulate medical advice for the general population like: People who can fall asleep even after drinking coffee all night might want to get their iron checked (and their genes).

One reason to look to 23andMe for new knowledge is that most other medical research is driven not by the desire to prevent suffering and related medical/socio-economic costs, but by hopes of finding a blockbuster drug. In the case of HH there is already cheap, drug-free treatment. Talk to doctors with an interest in HH and they will tell you it is almost impossible to get funding for HH research for that reason. There are other examples of this, genetic conditions needing further research but neglected because there's no obvious path to profit from such research.

3. The genealogy factor: I first got my genes tested by Oxford Ancestry when I was researching my lineage. I already knew my fore-fathers back to the 1300s and wanted to go further. I can do that with 23andMe, although frankly I have not had the time. On the other hand, when I get some free time, that will be one thing I will 'play' with.

4. Value for money relative to a single genetic test: For example, depending on your insurance situation you may pay as much as $150 for the HFE test that shows your HH status. You get your HFE status for $99 with 23andMe, plus a whole lot more.

5. Empowerment: You might want a genetic test that your doctor says you don't need. If the test is covered within 23andMe you can make your own decision. And don't worry that the test results will be hard to read. As Matt said in his answer "the ease of use of the 23andme website should even make the biggest technophobe into an informed patient." I think it is one of the most impressive user interfaces I have seen, and UI design has, at times, been part of my job for 25 years.

So, in my opinion 23andMe is totally worth it. I really can't see a downside to getting involved, especially now that the cost of entry is under $100.

I had my results a while ago and I found some interesting information on my ancestry section. Thus, I can say it definitely worths to know these.

I am ethnically Georgian, my ancestors were migrated to Turkey from Georgia decades ago. Both my fathers and mothers roots are in Georgia. All the stories I listened from my grandparents were about it and they even mentioned that my mother and father were far relatives since their ancestors are from the same village, back in Georgia.

When I check my maternal line from the results, I can say the results supports that information since it shows my mothers roots are from the geographic region around todays Georgia, northwestern shores of Caspian sea.

However, my paternal line shows something very weird. His roots are back in Basque region (Southwest of France) 500 years ago. This is something we didn't know until this test.

The weird thing is, there is an unproved hypothesis that Basque and Georgian people are relatives to each other, they are somehow connected. They have ancient languages not belong to Indo-European language family, they have common words in their languages and common cultural ceremonies, ancient Greeks named Georgia as "East Iberia" and Basque Country as "West Iberia", and so on.

Somehow, my results supports this hypothesis.

Just got my results back, and it's changed my life.

CUE: ominous & kitschy horror movie soundtrack...impending doom!!

Specifically, genetic testing through 23andMe (company) changed the circumstances of my death.

I discovered that I have a significantly higher risk of developing one particular nasty disease than I'd ever imagined - or at least, to be more accurate and less nuts about it, I have a marker or two that suggests that there are a few things that I ought to pay a little closer attention to, going forward. I've always known that there could be issues with this disease for me; the risk doubles or so if you have close family members with the disease, and I got at least one of those, too.

There's not a whole lot you can do about this particular sword of damocles, other than the things I've been doing for most of my life, as it is. However, my kids' dad has close family members who have or have had it, too.

I'll be damned if it turns out there was something I could do or could have done to keep my kids from ever developing this disease.

So, I decided to change my will, and leave my body & brain to medical research (absent recyclable organs). Slice me, dice me, and mince me up - if there's one gift I can give toward fixing that fool gene, it's me.

I know that there's a good chance that I will never develop that particular disease; and certainly in looking at my results, there were a few things that I had a "normal" or even "reduced" risk of developing - that I've actually had a little bit of experience with. But there were other results - traits, drug responses, ancestry, all that - that flipped a few mental switches; and explained a lot that my doctor couldn't, no matter how much time I got to spend with him talking all about me.

That darn genetic testing made me think about my responsibility to the people I love, and even to the people I don't particularly care for. Maybe I'll die of it, maybe I won't. And maybe I can't find a cure for it, but I can sure die and keep on trying.

So, yeah - it was worth it; at least, I hope it will be worth it, and maybe even invaluable, to someone, someday.

The majority of 23andMe users won't receive directly medically actionable information. That's no great surprise: most of us are by and large healthy, so we shouldn't expect every genome to be hiding major health-relevant secrets. In general, you should buy a 23andMe test assuming that you will learn some interesting things about genetics and yourself, but nothing that will profoundly change your healthcare or lifestyle.

Of course, that's not always the case. A small but non-zero fraction of the population will in fact uncover directly useful information: a high lifetime risk of breast cancer, for instance, that (once confirmed by a clinical-grade test) warrants additional screening for early signs of disease.

In addition, a larger number of people will discover that they are carriers of recessive disease mutations that don't increase their own risk of disease, but may have important reproductive implications (it's worth testing to see if your partner carries mutations in the same gene - if so, each of your children have a 25% chance of suffering from the disease in question).

One person who learnt a substantial amount of health-relevant information from 23andMe is my Genomes Unzipped colleague Luke Jostins, who discovered that he has a predisposition towards the iron overload disorder haemochromatosis and the late-onset eye disease macular degeneration, and also that he is a carrier for a cystic fibrosis mutation. He has since followed up these results within the UK clinical genetics service. You can read more about hist story here:

http://www.genomesunzipped.org/2011/06/3747.php

Of course, we shouldn't make the mistake of assuming that the only value of a personal genomic test comes from health implications. I'd argue that getting a genome scan is worthwhile - at least for those with a hacker mentality - just for the sheer joy of playing with a million bits of your own genetic data, and learning more about how genetics works in the process.

And for others there are far more serious reasons to pursue genomic testing. I've personally helped two people use 23andMe data to track down and confirm long-lost family members. For adoptees with no information about their biological family, genomic data can also provide a valuable source of information about both their deep ancestry and their potential family health history that would otherwise be completely inaccessible.

There is some truth to the claim that the personal genomics industry has created unrealistic expectations about the value of their product. But that absolutely does not mean that the real value of a 23andMe test is zero. Rather, the value depends both on who you are and how prepared you are to take the time to learn from the information available.

I found it very interesting and worth the money spent on it, I too got the $99 special. It's definitely fun for me to learn/confirm many interesting traits that I have. Learning the risk of developing certain diseases has also helped me to re-evaluate my lifestyle etc. I hope that genetic testing will become a routine for personalized medicine in a soon future, but it will take some time, as many have mentioned already.

Sometimes one tends to over-interpret the risk factors. Many factors besides genetics contribute to the development of certain disease. Whether you get a high or low confidence # for a certain risk factor is not as important as one may think it is. It is all about correlations. Even strong associations between gene variants and diseases do not necessarily translate into useful clinical tools for evaluating individual risk.

my two cents... :)

I have been a 23andme customer for several years now and had my immediate family tested as well.I believe it is worth the expense for several reasons:
1. I found out I was at risk for one disease that I already knew ran strongly in my family. Although I am in perfect health I showed my results to my GP who , based on my family history and the new 23andme risk, referred me to a specialist. I was given a clean bill of health but am on watch mode. I find this comforting.
2. I was afraid at first to open the "bad disease results" but finally took the plunge. And there was great relief to know I didn't have any of those snps. Of course I could still get the diseases but to know that some known snps are absent is also comforting
3. I found it interesting to see which of my 3 children inherited this or that from myself or my husband. Since a few of the things run in our families my children can now try to improve their diets and other health habits to try to avoid the problems at an early age
4. I am a big genealogy nut and have my roots already documented many generations. So far I have identified two cousins I didn't know about through 23andme and we are exchanging information by emails. Just the other day I got a picture of my great great grandfather that I never had before. Of course many people do not get back to requests to connect and that is annoying. But also it is sometimes very time consuming to figure out where exactly you are related. I wish 23andme would somehow connect with ancestry.com and make this process a bit easier.

I had paid around $200 for it and didn't think it provided any valuable insight for me personally.

I am of Southeast Asian and East Asian descent. 23andme says I'm 100% East Asian. I think the result is lacking/imperfect/geared towards mostly Europeans only.

Most of my health results were also misleading/incorrect, because the correlation to the study assumes my ethnicity to be European.

Why even bother putting the result on my health page, if it doesn't relate to my ethnicity? I understand that most available reports and studies available are for Europeans, then why not write "Not Applicable" on those studies for my report rather than filling it with useless and incorrect information?

All in all, I think it's probably worthwhile if you're European, but for non-Europeans... wait another 3-5 years. The price will only go lower, and the results would only get better.

Yes. The $99 I spent in September 2014, time perusing SNPedia, and $5 feeding my data to www.promethease.com were very worthwhile.

I found out my young onset rectal cancer didn't come from either of the common MUTYH mutations which would make a two year colonoscopy interval prudent, although I do have six SNPs predisposing me towards colorectal cancer which makes me nearly certain it came from my mother with her history of polyps not something environmental like living too near EPA superfund sites which could affect my wife too. I'm more relaxed knowing that. My doctors test all tumors for proteins associated with Lynch syndrome so I already knew that wasn't a problem.

I have two copies of the ApoE epsilon 4 allele which make me 20X more likely to get late-onset Alzheimer's plus a pair of rs2075650 G alleles which separately would be a 4X risk increase. I wondered a bit since my father's mother died of Alzheimer's, although knowing my details I'll pay closer attention to research and be pro-active about getting on whatever drugs come out.

I have four of five SNP risk factors for prostate cancer which imply a 9.5X relative risk when I take into account family history. That's interesting but doesn't change anything - my father has prostate cancer, his father had it, and I was already getting checked. My grandfather died of other causes at age 90, it's the non-aggressive wait-and-see form in my father, I wasn't worried before, and I'm not worried now.

I was really impressed by it, though definitely not for $500. The $99 special was outstanding. The real value comes in having your friends/family (family especially, obviously) do it, because there are a lot of good tools for comparing your genome to, say, your sister who was much luckier in the genetic lottery.

The diseases for me were extremely interesting, partially because I found a few very high risk factors (way more than normal people) that I can really do something about. The heritage part was okay because, as it turns out, I have a pretty exciting heritage.

My overall recommendation: Do it, but wait for a discount. Also do it before the FDA decides that it's not allowed, as is apparently going to be the case.

Absolutely worth it! I found out that I am genetically sensitive to gluten which solved a “mystery” problem I have had for years and non of my doctor’s ever prescribed me to take the gluten test.

Genetic mapping is a future of the medical industry. Doctors should stop guessing while coming up with diagnosis. Without knowing the patient’s genetic data it is equal to using “crystal ball” for future predictions.

There is a saying in Eastern Europe “Each doctor has his own cemetery behind his back” which means that he goes through multiple trials and errors that cost his patients lives.

Get your genetic data, then you will know exactly which doctor or treatment you will need.

Edit:

Another case: I had a neighbor woman who died young from ovarian cancer. She had BRCA1/BRCA2 gene mutation but she found out about it too late when her cancer was stage 4 and doctors were misdiagnosing her for 2 years while her cancer was developing. If she knew about her genetic data earlier she could take proactive actions and probably still could be alive, it is much better to discover cancer at stage 1 vs stage 4.

I know my ancestors seven generations back, so I was going to simply receive a confirmation of what I had already known: that I am entirely Slavic (or, as it’s called in the profile, Eastern European).

The results were more amusing than that. It appeared that I had some 10% Northern European ancestry. Hey, this is a lot! Of those, 1.6% was Finnish, which, according to my calculation, means that someone eight generations back could have been from thereabouts. I cannot even begin guessing whose side and who it could be. I also found that I have a tiny percentage of Ashkenazi genes. Well, technically, this is not surprising; I imagine most Europeans have some trace of those.

Now, 23andMe does not offer any health information at the moment, but it doesn’t mean no one else does - I ran my raw data through other services (thanks to the Anon for the heads up: Someone anonymous's answer to Which tools can be used to analyze 23andMe raw data?) and found some interesting things. Among those, I found a direct “clue” to my guesses regarding possible symptoms of the autism spectrum in me, as well as explanations of my long-term run-ins with depression. It turns out there are multiple genetic causes for those! And, similarly to Stephen Cobb, I found that the strongest gene expression suggested to me as a risk factor was the one pointing at hereditary hemochromatosis. I have never heard about this condition but at least now I’ll read up; I have a hunch about it being very relevant.

I thought it was worth it, but I think I had an unusual case and most people I've talked to who have done it didn't find it worth it. The main thing I found out was that I was lactose intolerant. I'd always known I'd had some digestion problems, but knowing exactly what the source was was pretty valuable. In hindsight there probably would have been other cheaper ways to figure this out, but for whatever reason I didn't end up figuring it out (and I think most people don't).

So it's basically a gamble whether you'll find out something valuable like that. If you don't it's basically just a novelty.

I found it worth it. The ancestry analysis was interesting and the raw data is valuable and cheaper from 23andme (at least on their specials) than it would have been elsewhere. The combination of the raw data and sites like snpedia are really interesting. Also, as I read papers on new gene association studies some fair portion of the time I've been able to go back to my 23andme results and decide whether the paper is applicable to me or not. So from an interest perspective, totally worth it. I bought my family kits for xmas and when they come back it's going to be fun to trace inheritance from my parents.

That having been said, there wasn't much there that I found immediately actionable and that changed my life or health in any significant way, so if you're looking for immediate medical relevance or diagnostics then it probably is not going to be worth it to you.

I'm a big fan - even if the results come back with no significant markers for disease risk, that in and of itself is valuable information to have (and not particularly 'boring' knowing you don't have increased risks of Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, etc.).

Plus, downloading the raw data and using a tool like Promethease (http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Promethease) can provide a great deal more complex data and results on your specific collection of variants. 23andMe is decidely conservative in what information they are willing to provide (and rightly so given the FDA's concerns about DTC genomics assays) so using the raw data file with third-party tools can be quite powerful. Worth every penny.

I paid $1000 as an early adopter, and yes I could have waited. It was still worth it in my opinion, for a number of reasons other than those already discussed:

Personal interest. Learning new knowledge and being able to interact with this information was amazing. If you think about this is probably the most worthwhile information about you that can be obtained aside from the obvious medical records. It's free to do what you want with, export that data, share, play; its yours. A fantastic way for anyone to learn about genetics.

Health and Lifestyle. Before taking the test I drank double digit cups of tea per day, my colleagues did it, I did it. However I got the side effects, not my colleagues. Why couldn't I have a coffee before bed and sleep, like my friends? Well it turns out I'm not good at metabolizing caffeine; the results from 23andMe.com indicate. Wowweee? Well for me, knowing that makes it that little bit easier to relinquish tea and coffee.

Coffee may be fun and trivial, but it makes a big difference. There are numerous indications tested and I want to keep this answer shortish, but I have one family member who I was able to help directly because we knew that the drugs she was taking would not work well for her condition due to testing through 23andMe.com. Adding another diagnostic layer to one's and health and lifestyle is always advantageous in my opinion.

Ancestry. Distant relatives have made contact, exchanging emails and learning about my history. I've met interesting people and shared stories along the way.

My experience is subjective, but I've gained value from 23andMe.com, quantifying that value in dollars is not easy, but with the new low price for a lifetime service, I can imagine that now or in the future there is value for money to be had.

I am a subscriber since 2010. This is the type of info I am getting:

... yeah, my chances for Restless Legs Syndrome are about 1.5% compared to the average 2%. Yay!

Or they let me know with a high degree of certainty, that the chance of me being blond is 10%:

or 5% in being ginger.

I also keep on getting invites to connect from my 5th cousins, with whom we share something like 0.35% of DNA, every couple of months.

I don't know how to work the raw data and interpreted data doesn't really give me any meaningful information. So, I keep on paying the fees and still waiting for them to show me something I can make use of, or at least something fun. In the meanwhile I am trying to answer as many surveys in order to support the cause.

Personal genomics is going through a Moore's Law-level technology explosion (and has since the Human Genome Project began). We should see whole-genome sequencing for cheap within a few years, which is significantly more powerful than what 23andme uses today (23andme "hybridizes" your DNA to a chip to find important points of difference, rather than reading out the sequence base by base).

At the moment you can get a full exome sequencing from Knome for $20,000 (http://www.knome.com/service/knomeselect.html), and a company named Complete Genomics claims they will offer $5000 whole-genome sequencing by the summer, except not to consumers (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16552-genome-sequencing-falls-to-5000-.html). By next year I'd expect consumer-level services to be around that price.

While the pace of discovery, adoption, and practical uses of genomic data is slower than advertised - and expectation were set to high - its good to see that some people received meaningful value from it - and others - like me - found it at least worth it from a curiosity stand point. I am biased from a couple perspectives - I lead a company that seeks to advance the value of this type of data; the curiosity of my family is high (and kinda geeky) and in essence when the sale price was put out ($99) we went for it. For a small subset of you you may find this free firefox tooltip useful - http://snptips.5amsolutions.com which makes it easier to find information about a particular SNP RSID, including your own genotype, when reading an article or blog post like this :)

Worth it in the sense of how boring we are!

I’m solidly British with far North African and Middle East origins. I’m negative on pretty much every marker except metabolising antacids slightly more quickly. It got my eye and hair color bang on.

My wife is solidly Chinese. Her only issue is a slight oversensitivity to Warfarin.

So basically, we’re immortal. Or something. I do have a horrible feeling I’m going to live a long time. Which in a way is good because I’ll catch up on all the reading I want to do.

Edit: Just been through a bunch of the addon sites. Still boring! I’ve a >50% of living to be 100. I have a greater risk of ovarian cancer and my wife has a higher risk of testicular cancer. So that’s a thing.

I found it interesting. It's hard to define "worth it" - that seems very personal and places great emphasis on the value of money and how best to spend it. We're glad we did it, but would we tell anyone else that they'll find it "worth it"? - we've recommended it but haven't used those words. I think it'll prove more and more worth it in the coming years.

The health information for me was surprisingly un-scary - ie. well-couched with good visualizations about actual probabilities - and, I hope, will be increasingly useful as I age. Little tidbits, like a confirmation of low caffeine tolerance (low rate of metabolization), have actually impacted my daily life. I look forward for an explanation to the high pancreatic cancer rates in my family, but it's not there yet.

From the ancestry side, it was a fun to know that I'm descended from one of four ashkenazi women and that my husband (many generations in america) may be part-Basque. The results also helped explain why we have one-blue-eyed child and one-brown-eyed child before we had those children.

I believe 23andme's health information is entirely or almost entirely based on your ethnicity, but please feel free to correct me.
The power of 23andme is that it gives you a list of health-related conditions and risk of contracting those conditions and makes you think about them. Terry Rice's posting notes that 23andme indicated a higher proclivity for Celiac's Disease and that if he had known this, he could have been alerted to his daughters Celiac Disease sooner and saved her some suffering. I think I could send a list of 20 conditions to 10,000 people and achieve similar success.

My wife refused to use the kit that I purchased for her due to privacy concerns. About 6 weeks ago I asked my son to send it in. I hate wasting money :-). He did. 3 weeks ago he was diagnosed with testicular cancer. Subsequent to that his 23andme results were processed and show a lower than average risk of testicular cancer.

So, I'm now sending a list of 1 condition to however many people read this post. I don't have an Illumina chip, so let's just say I know these things. If you're male or have male children, I'm telling you, you have a higher than average risk of getting testicular cancer, so go do this...
The TCRC Self Examimation Page

You may also want to take a pregnancy test, but this only detects a few types of testicular cancer...
Man Finds Tumor After Pregnancy Test

PS. Make sure your boys do it and don't just say they did.

EDIT: Updated my answer below, please note the differences!

I'm slightly disappointed so far. Why is that?

1) My main reason was the health risk but unfortunately the FDA asked them to stop it now (if I ordered a week earlier I still would have got my results, too bad).

I'm not American so I don't know much about the FDA but as an adult I'm used to make decisions on my own and I don't need an agency to overrule my judgement because some people might overreact on the results they get back)

2) The ancestry part is being a bit disappointing so far. Part is what 23andme is delivering as information like haplogroups which is very broad and totally within what my research has shown so far.

Back on the 29th of Jan I wrote: "Secondly I'm a bit disappointed with my so-called distant cousins. None had responded in 2 weeks to my messages, nobody from the over 330 has responded to me putting up my whole ancestry tree (I assume some should have gotten an email saying they have new relatives)"

Have to correct this point. Since then a lot has changed, it eventually all comes done to how much value you add when you send a cousin a message. Here are my most successful tips & tricks, which made me exchange genes with more than 20% of the cousins I've asked!

a) Provide some value for them - Once I've noticed they have a German surname I've looked up the regional distribution of that surname and also went through my literature of onomastics to find out about the meaning behind that surname. Main purpose is to help this cousin get a better understanding where his surname and therefore his male ancestor comes from in Germany (as most people are having difficulties in linking it back to Germany). Not always the regional distribution helps obviously but you can try it for yourself in case you have a German surname: Geogen

If the surname is eg coming from a former first name or a profession, it's obviously all over the place. But still many people don't know this and the explanation as to what their surname means helps them.

b) Go through their data, either in the form of listed surnames, cities, regions or even their family tree if listed via 23andme or if they have given their family tree for an online resource like Genealogy, Family Trees & Family History Records at Ancestry.com. A soon as you find a match, you have a good ice-breaker to start a meaningful conversation with your cousin

c) Customize your message. I've experimented a lot and will still continue to refine to find out what works best. Different messages for male vs female, for people that share their profile vs those that remain unknown. Trying to first get an ok for a conversation vs inviting them directly to share genes.

Like I said I managed with the above and a lot of hours invested a response rate of more than 20% but I have to say that I'm also not going far down the list to those cousins that have really a small overlap with me (unless there is one of the above reasons that caught my interest, like the same location, surname etc.).

So my general consensus about 23andme has changed slightly to the positive but still it's lacking a lot because of the missing health reports (though its possible to eg calculate some of the heath risk like Alzheimer yourself. I just forgot how, haha ;-)