Remember what happened to myspace. I hope Garmin squish this "worm" Groundspeak/Geocaching.
Please see this outstanding article by me Nick Brown and JOIN www.opencaching.com. Also move your caches out of Groundspeak / Geocaching, transfer your caches to www.opencaching.com
As far as I know, the Groundspeak/Garmin partnership was never a formal corporate tie-up – beyond specific projects such as the addition of geocache icons to GPS devices or integration of the Wherigo player – but it’s clear that both companies gained from their relationship, which had symbiotic elements. It makes sense for the biggest GPS manufacturer to work with the biggest geocache listing site.
I don’t know how big Garmin’s handheld/outdoor market is, but I’m going to guess that in 2008 it was about twice as big as they had probably forecast when making long-term plans back in 2001 or so. That extra doubling, or whatever, in size is entirely due to geocaching – an activity which emerged from nowhere, cost Garmin practically nothing in R&D and marketing, and has probably resulted in more revenue for Garmin than it has for Groundspeak. (In 2008, pretty well every geocacher had forked over $150 to $400 for a GPS unit; some proportion of those might have bought one or two years’ worth of Premium Membership on Geocaching.com at US$30 and/or a couple of travel bugs.)
Then, the geocaching device market – of which I’m guessing Garmin’s share was 85-90 per cent in 2008 – began to change. Smartphones with GPS capacity started to appear. Sure, you wouldn’t want to go caching in the deep woods with one of these do-not-drop devices but for FTF hunters in the city, they’re pretty handy (so I’m told; I might even get one, some day).
Also, Groundspeak teamed up with someone-other-than Garmin to produce the GeoMate.Jr. Now, it seems to me that the main use of this GPS unit is as a present for your kids so they can follow an arrow too – in other words, it’s an extra, very low-end device that Garmin wasn’t going to sell anyway – but apparently, this ticked Garmin off too. They saw Groundspeak clearing US$7 from every smartphone app sold, versus a big round $0 for themselves, and they weren’t getting any revenue from the GeoMate Jr either. So, like a jealous would-be boyfriend who has misread the nature of his relationship with a girl – he imagines they’re going steady, she keeps showing up with other guys – it seems that somebody at Garmin decided to teach Groundspeak a lesson.
Of course, Garmin has always made out that its listing service is some kind of “community-driven” initiative. First, there’s the name: “OpenCaching” – perhaps only “FluffyKittenCaching” would have been nicer. There was already a loosely-coupled network of other Opencaching sites in various countries, run on a non-profit basis by volunteers. Garmin claimed to have had “some great discussions” with these sites but they’re the only ones who remember those conversations. Score -1 for Garmin, who should perhaps have realised their initial target market was people who don’t like Groundspeak, many of whom were already on the grassroots Opencaching sites, so alienating them was a poor idea.
Next, there’s the propaganda: “Caching should be free”, “Driven by the community”, yada yada. The usual stuff you hear from large companies in this social media age: “We’re on the side of the little guys.” Really. “Corporate jet? What corporate jet?” (One of the truly bizarre features of the low-level, undeclared PR war between Garmin and Groundspeak has been how Garmin, a $3 billion company whose headquarters are located in a tax haven, has portrayed itself as being just a bunch of philanthropists, up against an unnamed, faceless, evil adversary that wants to steal all your cache data. When did Garmin’s president and chief financial officer last go into a dunk tank in front of the customers?)
http://www.notaboutthenumbers.com/2011/12/05/opencaching-com-one-year-on/
