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You never realize how many new geocachers there are...


Kabuthunk

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So I was killing some time today, persuing various 'high score' stats on 'itsnotaboutthenumbers.com', when I happened to notice that the links from that page that lead to geocaching profiles on gc.com showed the users' ID number in the address bar. What mainly caught my eye was Moun10Bike's being number 24. But... that's besides the point. That's just what got me started looking.

 

During said boredom, I also checked if anyone with a 'weird' number (such as 123456, 100000, 1111111, etc) noted in their profile that they had such an ID number. Of the several that I checked... pretty much all of them were dead accounts (a shame, really... I wouldn't have minded having something like 765432 or something :D), but that got me to thinking even FURTHER.

 

How many people have registered in a single day? I decided to check yesterday since well... today is still going (but on a random note of curiosity, the most recent number as of 11:35pm CST is 1454689, which I'm sure has changed by the time I click 'submit' on this post).

 

Continuously narrowing down my search, I found that the very first person to register on Jan. 29th, 2008 was number 1452740, while the very last person to register was number 1453802. Doing some simple subtraction, we find...

 

1062 people have registered for geocaching in a single day! I'm not about to check, but I'm guessing that it's not going to be too much different from one day to the next. The blind-chance odds that this day is severely non-typical is slim to nil :P.

 

One day... one single day... over 1000 people have registered for an account. Man... the way this hobby is growing, it boggles the mind. Kinda makes me glad I have an ID number that's 6 digits long, and a little envious of those with smaller still :D.

 

EDIT: I was right... in the time it took to type the last three paragraphs (about 2 minutes), another two people have registered for geocaching.com. That's 888 people today and counting :).

Edited by Kabuthunk
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you're right...

 

 

you ARE bored.

 

:D

 

 

interesting, I'd actually have guessed the number was higher than that. I know a lot of people who have started geocaching, and there has been a PBS documentary and a large newspaper story in my town alone just in the past few days.

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Interesting observation. At #602959, that means about 42% of current registered members started before me. I'm actually part of the older half. Here I've been thinking of myself as more of a newbie than an old-timer. I guess I was wrong. In terms of active membership, I'd probably be much more part of the old guard, even though I only started in '06.

 

Hmmm, interesting observation indeed. Just doing the math in my head it appears that the eventual Mainstream Event Horizon mayyy be closer than I first thought. :D

 

Of course a few of those would have to be sock puppets and need to be discounted. :)

 

Makes ya wonder how many of those pony up the $30. :D Maybe Groundspeak should sell stock. :P

 

Another observation: I go to a lot of events (104 so far) and recently there have been waves of NEW faces. I went to one local event where more than 50% of the folks that showed up were new. That's kinda cool. :D

 

I like noobs too. (No, not because they taste like chicken.) With some, it's easy to catch a high off of their excitement. :P

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1062 people have registered for geocaching in a single day! I'm not about to check, but I'm guessing that it's not going to be too much different from one day to the next. The blind-chance odds that this day is severely non-typical is slim to nil

 

There are peaks. When geocaching appears on a popular TV show, a national news show or in a nationally distributed magazine there will be large spikes in registrations.

 

I can't say if that was the case on the day you chose, but to get an accurate average you'd have to check over a period of time.

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I would be curious to see how many "active" members there really are compared to total members. Also, of those active how many are premium members. (not going to even ask about the Platinum memberships, save that for another thread. Plus I don't want to spoil my chances of getting said membership)

Edited by KJcachers
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I would be curious to see how many "active" members there really are compared to total members. Also, of those active how many are premium members. (not going to even ask about the Platinum memberships, save that for another thread. Plus I don't want to spoil my chances of getting said membership)

You can calculate that, but it would take a while.

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I am a noob! :D #1331804

 

I joined a few months ago but I just got a GPS (for my husband but now its mine) for Christmas and found 5 caches so far. WOO-HOO!!

 

I was hoping to find a few this weekend but its snowing outside. I can't wait for Spring.

Edited by redtech
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Oh wow, I'm number...

(edit after I find my number...)

Number 1,020,154 - and my post count will never catch up...

Interestingly, Briansnat's post count passed his ID number about 1500 posts ago.

 

About a year ago I did a random sampling of days from each year to see how many people signed up and how many had been active in their account within the last 6 months.

 

While the numbers per day that signed up changed significantly as time went on, the number of accounts active within the previous six months remained about the same. Approximately 26-28% of accounts created were accessed within the six months before I ran the numbers.

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im still really new to the sport(#1365523) started around thanksging as i just found out about the sport in October of last year. bought a garmin etrex for christmas just for caching and went prem and cache almost everyday.you were bored but i was too this morning and found something interesting thats a lil related. I went looking at cachers in my area looking at whose i have found all of vs whose has the most that i havent found. What i also noticed that ther are a lot of members that have been around for over a yr or two and have only like 10-20 found we have over 300 in our area in a lil over 1 1/2 months looking to hit 100 in the next week theres even one with no finds but 13 hid. So i guess my point is that there are probably a lot of people that join everyday just cause they found out about it and are looking to see what its all about but there are probably only a few that actually get into the sport and that get and stay active with it. JMO

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So I was killing some time today, persuing various 'high score' stats on 'itsnotaboutthenumbers.com', when I happened to notice that the links from that page that lead to geocaching profiles on gc.com showed the users' ID number in the address bar. What mainly caught my eye was Moun10Bike's being number 24. But... that's besides the point. That's just what got me started looking.

 

During said boredom, I also checked if anyone with a 'weird' number (such as 123456, 100000, 1111111, etc) noted in their profile that they had such an ID number. Of the several that I checked... pretty much all of them were dead accounts (a shame, really... I wouldn't have minded having something like 765432 or something :unsure:), but that got me to thinking even FURTHER.

 

How many people have registered in a single day? I decided to check yesterday since well... today is still going (but on a random note of curiosity, the most recent number as of 11:35pm CST is 1454689, which I'm sure has changed by the time I click 'submit' on this post).

 

Continuously narrowing down my search, I found that the very first person to register on Jan. 29th, 2008 was number 1452740, while the very last person to register was number 1453802. Doing some simple subtraction, we find...

 

1062 people have registered for geocaching in a single day! I'm not about to check, but I'm guessing that it's not going to be too much different from one day to the next. The blind-chance odds that this day is severely non-typical is slim to nil :D.

 

One day... one single day... over 1000 people have registered for an account. Man... the way this hobby is growing, it boggles the mind. Kinda makes me glad I have an ID number that's 6 digits long, and a little envious of those with smaller still :D.

 

EDIT: I was right... in the time it took to type the last three paragraphs (about 2 minutes), another two people have registered for geocaching.com. That's 888 people today and counting :D.

 

 

Oh no some may have signed up so they could get cords to caches to muggle them :unsure: Probably not but in Dublin Ohio you notice a big amount of new cachers with like 3 finds

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Fizzymagic used to keep up with all kinds of data regarding caches, cachers, and logs over time (and explain what the heck it meant).

Looks like it is time to update the graphs. I did it a few times during the run-up to the Great Digit Addition, but I didn't update everything like I should have. So now the time has come.

 

First, the growth in the number of caches out there (or at least submitted):

Caches0307.gif

 

A semilog plot shows that it is still sub-exponential:

LogCaches0307.gif

 

The number of accounts, however, has really increased dramatically:

Users0307.gif

 

In fact, if you look at the square root of the number of accounts, which used to be linear, you can see something happen about the middle of 2005:

SqrtUsers0307.gif

 

In fact, it almost looks like growth in user accounts is approaching exponential:

LogUsers0307.gif

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Wow! I thought that I was late getting into geocaching, but I'm 255690. Now I really feel old (well, as far as caching goes that is!) Now that I think that I was early into it, I feel much better and more experienced already. And I'm a slacker, haven't even found my 100th cache yet. I like to think that I'm 'pacing' myself. heh heh heh

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Wow! I thought that I was late getting into geocaching, but I'm 255690. Now I really feel old (well, as far as caching goes that is!) Now that I think that I was early into it, I feel much better and more experienced already. And I'm a slacker, haven't even found my 100th cache yet. I like to think that I'm 'pacing' myself. heh heh heh

 

At 212595, I'm in the same boat and like to think I'm more of the tortoise than the hare and eventually I'll win the race!

 

If you really want to crunch numbers... Take membership fees vs. caches found. Looks like I am one hell of a supporter!!!

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Good thinking, Neat_guy! I usually only cache when I'm going to an area on business, when I have a few extra minutes, so I don't get to cache as much as I'd like. Recently talked up caching enough that another of our IT dept. is now out there and he talked his family into it. And I'm a Premium Member too. Nothing like supporting the hobby, even if you and I don't get to DO the hobby ourselves, ha ha!

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I joined almost 3 years ago, but have only cached sporadically since. I have a blast but time just doesn't permit more. Work, home, family, etc. I'd love to go out a lot more!!

 

ETA - 419162 that's pretty cool, I'm on the early 1/2. :huh:

Edited by MickieD
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One day... one single day... over 1000 people have registered for an account. Man... the way this hobby is growing, it boggles the mind. Kinda makes me glad I have an ID number that's 6 digits long, and a little envious of those with smaller still :huh: .

 

 

has anyone ever looked at Alexa.com for website traffic info? I've been watching geocaching.com and I am curious about why traffic peaked in 2006. Right now, even with the post Christmas Day surge, we are back to 2003/2004 levels. In 2005, web traffic to this site grew. It peaked in 2006, and then slumped in 2007.

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I wonder what the percentage / number of active cachers is.

 

There are certainly a lot of caches around. I wonder if there is a good way to tell how many cachers are still active.

 

I notice quite frequently old logs from people "This is my first cache, I loved it!" and the log was from 2005, and their cache number still says (3)... either they just never got to go out again, or they forgot their login and created a new account.

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I'm # 286558 that puts me in the first 20%. I guess that will get smaller as time goes by.

 

My number is 172665. I thought I was late to the party as well, but it turns out that I'm almost a first-10%'er.

 

I too often wonder how many active cachers are out there? Can GC (or someone) query how many unique members logged a find in the last 60 days?

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