Waymarking 2.0: Raw greed teams with Education

I have been going through the new Waymarking site tonight thinking to my self will people do this now? I have written in the past of how I personally think waymarking is fun. As my very unbalanced new stat bar on this blog shows I am a virtual pirate when it comes to the game though :) I don't go view others waymarks, I just go claim stuff for my own. I imagine if this does take off there will be two types of users. Ones that like to visit and those like myself.

For me the biggest update to the site was a principal that makes geocaching so addicting. The stats bar.

For some this alone will be enough of a motivator. You can now compete with others to both create waymarks and log others marks. I think this was essential. It makes it more of a game and less of a trip to the history museum. (I personally love trips to the history museum, but my wife doesn't ;)

Other updates include much more detailed mapping and a whole host of features if you personally wish to have a waymarking category. (Not my thing)

The site as a whole looks a lot more expensive. The look is more along the lines of the geocaching.com site. But as nice as it looks, it really isn't, in my opinion, easier to use. Just looking through some of the forums I notice that a lot of people have difficulty just creating a waymark.

I am a believer of the phrase "If you build it they will come." Jeremy and the Groundspeak team have built a wonderful website. Waymarking is something searching for a clientele. I think from a game prospective Waymarking is too easy. You could go through and log a hundred waymarks in a day. It is actually pretty labor intensive to create a waymark, however.

In the future I hope that Waymarking is used more like Wikipedia or google maps. I think you could get a great locals prospective on areas. As a virtual pirate I think it is a great thing to do if you are walking between geocaches or on the way to a geocache.

Will Waymarking ever be as fun as geocaching? Most likely not.

Will Geocaching help your kid with a book report? No. As similar as the tools used for Geocaching and Waymarking are, the hobbies are definitively different.

Conclusion: Waymarkers are going to be a breed of their own.