Opencaching.com update.
Helloooooo all.
Thought I would chime in with a few notes, and interesting observations.
Opencaching.com
Not to be confused with opencaching.us .dk or some of the original opencaching crowd. I am speaking of the ones by Garmin.
It was interesting to note that this last week there were fewer caches on opencaching.com than the week before.
A friend that collects the data from OC.com pointed it out to me earlier this week. I did not ask him to use his numbers here so I will not toss him under the bus for all to see. But there are a few things to note. The site is not quite a year old. They have about 17,500 caches, that were added. Of those it appears 5-10% are unique. So most of you will go out out find a cache and will find that more than 9 out of 10 are already on the geocaching.com website.
Opencaching stats. Top Total, Bottom new additions.
You can see the huge jump in cache submission when they had their GPS unit giveaway. There was none when they did their chirp giveaway. At least I don't see one. (I cannot remember when they did that.
It could be that things are leveling off. It appears that way. Most that I have talked to locally have not noticed a find on their caches. Some of the finds are imports. You can import your finds from other caches, so they will appear. So even logs that are there may be copies of the logs from geocaching.com.
Advertising
On another note.. there was an ad in backpacker magazine for opencaching. The pics were sent to me. I did find them rather funny.
If you look to the right you get the image that I was sent. Below is the blowup.
Yep you got it. On a advertisement that is for Garmin's opencaching.com there is a nice picture of a GPS unit. If you notice the GPS unit is showing a GC# or a geocaching.com cache.
Time to have a talk with your Advertising people .
Summary
I wonder what is in store. Most people that I know of have never heard of the site still. Or if they have they have not desire to do anything with it. It does not bode well for opencaching. They are approaching the 20,000 cache milestone. Assuming there are no more geocides, where people just archive all they have.
I think they may become a niche market. Though I am not sure what there corner is.
the Opencaching network seems very innovative. They are trying new things and doing things that the other sites are not trying.
Terracaching has its "private entry". You have to find sponsors, and people that trust you. Their idea is to push the hide quality. I am not sure that hold true anymore.
Navicache... meh... not sure. Just being an alternative is not enough.
Garmin has tossed some interesting ideas into the works. I think it has pushed Groundspeak to respond faster. In the past they may have planned Project A for January, B for March, C for May. Now it appears they are working on A, B, and C for January, with C,D,and E lined for for Feb, March. They are tackling more, faster, and trying new things.
All of this is good for caching. What people will do next.. we have to see.