Did you know that…

According today’s home page TFN claims to have 4,129 groups. That in itself sounds a good boast. But did you know that according to Yahoo they have a grand total of 8375 groups that are something to do with freecycle, of which only 2846 designate the TM mark and 165 designate the (R) mark (UK only).

So if my arithmetic is correct then around 1/3rd of all TFN groups may well be infringing on TFN’s trademark claims. Also no matter which way you cut it there are actually more freecycling groups on Yahoo that do not belong to TFN than are actually affiliated to TFN. Presumably these groups run totally independently.

Looking at the “competition” to TFN, there are

• Freeshare – 700 groups
• Reuseit – 254 groups
• FreeGiveAway – 69 groups
• Realcycle – 50 groups
• Freeuse – 30 groups
• SharingIsGiving – 203 groups
• 2Good2Toss – 47 groups
• Ecycle – 21 groups
• Freeuse – 30 groups
• Recycle4Free – 40 groups
• FreeSources – 74 groups
• FreeActivate – 7 groups
• Freedomcycle – 6 groups
• rCycle – 3 groups
• FullCircles – 6 groups

This survey is largely done using searches on Yahoo and therefore is not totally reliable and may involve some overlap. Also some groups such as Cafe’s and Modsquads will be included in the tallies. Also many groups state “We are not affiliated with The Freecycle Network” in their home pages: these would be still included in the freecycle tally.