What is the difference between....

[+Davequal]

Ground Speaks site and Open Caching..... besides I noticed that there is A LOT more caches listed on this site ?

[+Redfist]

Ground Speaks site and Open Caching..... besides I noticed that there is A LOT more caches listed on this site ?

 

Different organizations - that's it. Geocaching.com has the vast majority of content though so I don't bother with any others.

[+Davequal]

OK so it is NOT an off shoot of this site. No need to bother with it.

[+addisonbr]

Ground Speaks site and Open Caching..... besides I noticed that there is A LOT more caches listed on this site ?

This is a tricky one to answer. I'll try to do it in a straight-forward manner (this type of question has a tendency to generate snarky replies). In brief:

 

geocaching.com wasn't the first listing site for geocaches, but it was the first to get real traction and it is certainly the oldest and largest.

 

opencaching.com was started by Garmin, an industry leader in GPS receivers, some months ago. Like most competing cache listing sites, it was designed to ultimately be similar to geocaching.com, but with some tweaks. There are different guidelines, for example, and they are enforced differently. opencaching.com had an initial rush of listings when they first came online with the beta site, at least partly (and probably mostly) because they encouraged people to cross-list their caches from other sites, and made it technologically easy for people to upload them. Growth has been much slower since, and total listings lag far behind geocaching.com.

 

It's open to debate whether opencaching.com's lack of growth is due more to the network effect (for which geocaching.com has a formidable, if not unassailable, advantage / head start), or due to the structure / architecture / administration of opencaching.com's web site and game rules (some of which, many on these forums disagree with strongly).

 

They are definitely not affiliated in any way, other than the fact that they are both listing services for a game that predates either company.

[jholly]

OK so it is NOT an off shoot of this site. No need to bother with it.

In a way it is an off shoot of this site. To get listing mass the other site encourages cache owners to list the caches they have listed on this site to list on their site. But this begs the question that if you log here why would you want to log there? So it comes down to no need to bother with it.

[knowschad]

Ground Speaks site and Open Caching..... besides I noticed that there is A LOT more caches listed on this site ?

This is a tricky one to answer. I'll try to do it in a straight-forward manner (this type of question has a tendency to generate snarky replies). In brief:

 

geocaching.com wasn't the first listing site for geocaches, but it was the first to get real traction and it is certainly the oldest and largest.

 

opencaching.com was started by Garmin, an industry leader in GPS receivers, some months ago. Like most competing cache listing sites, it was designed to ultimately be similar to geocaching.com, but with some tweaks. There are different guidelines, for example, and they are enforced differently. opencaching.com had an initial rush of listings when they first came online with the beta site, at least partly (and probably mostly) because they encouraged people to cross-list their caches from other sites, and made it technologically easy for people to upload them. Growth has been much slower since, and total listings lag far behind geocaching.com.

 

It's open to debate whether opencaching.com's lack of growth is due more to the network effect (for which geocaching.com has a formidable, if not unassailable, advantage / head start), or due to the structure / architecture / administration of opencaching.com's web site and game rules (some of which, many on these forums disagree with strongly).

 

They are definitely not affiliated in any way, other than the fact that they are both listing services for a game that predates either company.

 

Excellent answer!

[+Sioneva]

OK so it is NOT an off shoot of this site. No need to bother with it.

In a way it is an off shoot of this site. To get listing mass the other site encourages cache owners to list the caches they have listed on this site to list on their site. But this begs the question that if you log here why would you want to log there? So it comes down to no need to bother with it.

 

With a few exceptions, it's just a outdated, partial mirror site. Caches crosslisted there may be archived here, so there's nothing there to find.

[+tozainamboku]

OK so it is NOT an off shoot of this site. No need to bother with it.

In a way it is an offshoot. Geocaching.com was the first website to offer geocaching. (Actually it was the second but it soon absorbed Mike Teague's site which really wasn't much more than a list of geocaches). There have bee several others - often setup by someone disappointed with some guideline or policy that Geoaching.com adopted. Most of these alternative sites have remained small (or folded after a year or so).

 

As geocaching grew, GPS manufacturers began to make units with features to support geocaching. Garmin was one of the manufacturers that added capabilities for paperless caching using the GPX file extensions developed by Groundspeak (the owner of Geocaching.com). I think Garmin was a little concerned that in order to get these GPX files you needed to be a Geocaching.com premium member. Unable to come to an agreement with Groundspeak to allow purchasers of Garmin units to get anything beyond a one month trial premium membership, they decided to launch their own site (Opencaching.com) to provide a source of free GPX files for purchasers of Garmin equipment. Of course they can't use the Geocaching.com proprietary database. Instead they encourage cache owners to list their geocaches on both sites. While Opencaching.com has some caches not found on Geocaching.com, they still have a long way to go in catching up on the number of caches listed. Only time will tell if they ever get to the point of being a challenge to Geocaching.com or if they go the way of many other alternative geocaching sites.

[knowschad]

OK so it is NOT an off shoot of this site. No need to bother with it.

In a way it is an offshoot. Geocaching.com was the first website to offer geocaching. (Actually it was the second but it soon absorbed Mike Teague's site which really wasn't much more than a list of geocaches). There have bee several others - often setup by someone disappointed with some guideline or policy that Geoaching.com adopted. Most of these alternative sites have remained small (or folded after a year or so).

 

As geocaching grew, GPS manufacturers began to make units with features to support geocaching. Garmin was one of the manufacturers that added capabilities for paperless caching using the GPX file extensions developed by Groundspeak (the owner of Geocaching.com). I think Garmin was a little concerned that in order to get these GPX files you needed to be a Geocaching.com premium member. Unable to come to an agreement with Groundspeak to allow purchasers of Garmin units to get anything beyond a one month trial premium membership, they decided to launch their own site (Opencaching.com) to provide a source of free GPX files for purchasers of Garmin equipment. Of course they can't use the Geocaching.com proprietary database. Instead they encourage cache owners to list their geocaches on both sites. While Opencaching.com has some caches not found on Geocaching.com, they still have a long way to go in catching up on the number of caches listed. Only time will tell if they ever get to the point of being a challenge to Geocaching.com or if they go the way of many other alternative geocaching sites.

 

What was that about the .gpx extention based on, Toz? I had heard speculation that the split was due to the Chirp, and other guesses, but I have not heard anything official one way or another that I could consider to be fact.

[+tozainamboku]

What was that about the .gpx extention based on, Toz? I had heard speculation that the split was due to the Chirp, and other guesses, but I have not heard anything official one way or another that I could consider to be fact.

I doubt it was the Chirp. Groundspeak was fairly quick in coming up with guidelines that allow Chirp caches.

 

If you look at the blue squirrel site, you will find right away the emphasis that it is all free and that you can download cache information directly to your GPS device. And if you buy a Garmin GPS now with GPX capability, you are no longer directed to Geocaching.com but to Opencaching.com instead.

 

While it is speculation on my part, I have to believe that Garmin is interested in marketing GPS units and they didn't like the fact that if they sold you a unit that was GPX capable, Groundspeak then made the money from selling you a premium membership. It would be like Apple selling you a iOS device, but the App Store was owned by your mobile carrier. Apple went into the app business because they didn't want the cellular carriers to have that part of the business. At least unlike Apple, you can still use Groundspeak premium features on a Garmin GPS.

[jholly]

At least unlike Apple, you can still use Groundspeak premium features on a Garmin GPS.

Not entirely true. The newer units do not support Wherigo caching. It would not shock me if they do not support the new virtuals other things that GS will come up with. Seems to me that lately that things are getting a bit chilly between GS and Garmin.