Groundspeak Portal

I'm relatively new to waymarking..but hooked. I'm interested in finding out about the history of the site..and can't find anything. Anyone out there who can tell me who developed the site, what were the first categories, etc.  Is there a post or website anywhere that explains all this? Thanks for any help you can offer.

I know McDonalds was the first waymark. Other then that I'd ask Some of the guys that's been around for a while. Swizzle

Waymarking was conceived by Groundspeak - the owners of the most popular geocaching site: www.geocaching.com, in 2005. The short story is that Groundspeak developed the waymarking site, at least in part, as a way to help address specific issues related to certain types of containerless caches that had come into existence on the geocaching site.

I'm not aware of a single web page that covers the history (with a time line or the original list of categories), but here are a few links that you might find useful:

The first waymark

Waymarking.com,.circa 2005

tozainamboku's excellent forum post describing circumstances that led to the origination of Waymarking.com

Thanks...I see the first WM was in 2005...but, I have seen that some people have been members mych earlier than that....is that because this was a geocaching site before waymarking split off into it's own realm?

metro2@aol.com:

Thanks...I see the first WM was in 2005...but, I have seen that some people have been members mych earlier than that....is that because this was a geocaching site before waymarking split off into it's own realm?

If I remember correctly, the public launch of the site didn't take place until 2006. I believe that any pre-2006 waymarking 'join dates' are associated with members of the Groundspeak development staff.

my join date is the day i signed up for a caching account....

My waymarking join date (11-04-2006)  bears no resemblance to my geocaching join date (1-18-2003).

cache_test_dummies:

My waymarking join date (11-04-2006)  bears no resemblance to my geocaching join date (1-18-2003).

The 11-4-2006 join date is the date you joined this forums (the forums were moved to this software on that date)

Oh, right. That's my waymarking forum join date. The join date on my waymarking profile page shows the same date as my geocaching join date.

And my join date over to the left reflects the day I changed my username and rejoined the forum.

Waymarking was officially made available in August of 2005.

WM1 was not the first Waymark Listed... but is generally accepted as the first Waymark.

The categories have been slightly shuffled... for example, Bloggers has not always been Grid A1.

BQ