A third of all UK freecycle groups have joined Freegle
Whichever way you cut it more and more UK groups are leaving freecycle in their droves. This organisation that was only launched 4 days ago has grown by 50% in the last 24 hours. My last post reported 194 groups, whereas my latest search comes out at a staggering 347 groups.
Please tell me if I am wrong, but my crude maths says that between a third and a half of all UK freecycling groups have now converted over to Freegle.
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About
Stemming from my experiences of giving and receiving items through the concept of Freecycling, this blog is a critique of the industry known as the “gift economy”. I started out as just another freecycler, then moderator. Then something happened that propelled me into being a movement activist. Much of what is written concerns the controversy surrounding The Freecycle Network (TFN). There are many articles referring back to the origins of the company, and indeed events that led up to its creation. This is therefore an activists blog.
If anyone sees anything incorrect please let me know and I will do what I can to correct them. Any errors and omissions are mine. All comments are welcome and indeed if anyone wishes to suggest future topics, or other sites related to the subject of the future of freecycling please tell me now, not tomorrow.
Returning freecycling back to the movement.
Andy Swarbrick, UK
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- Freegle: Find a group
Unfortunately a number of these groups are placeholder groups or, worse yet, groups setup by TFN to make life difficult for us. However, we are doing great. As of right now, our official stats are: 105 groups and 492,123 members. That is 21% of the groups and 24% of the membership in just two days. And numbers are steadily climbing.
Over half a million Freeglers now
Over 50% of the members in the North East of the UK have moved to Freegle – they’re leading the way!
Our freecycle group mod just quietly announced we’re with freegle as of 12/13 Sep, so numbers will surely jump (especially if members weren’t given a say about it), but, anyway, upon rejoining the freecycle group I can now participate in both groups!
The latest figures I can find are 157 ex-Freecycle groups are now Freegle groups, this is 31% of the original Freecycle total.
This site rocks!
You need to adjust your main article as your numbers are extremely overinflated. There is no point in publishing numbers if you are not prepared to get them from a verifiable source and double check with Freegle that they are correct. Email Jon directly. He will have correct numbers daily.
I have asked Freegle for their official position, and when they come back to me on – then I will correct this. Also there are groups renaming themselves as Freegle groups that are not, as yet on the official Freegle list. Should I include those, or not? The truth is this is a fast moving position.
For your information, I do not get my numbers out of thin air. Without official Freegle numbers I get them from Yahoo.
There are alot of newly setup and dummy freegle group with hardly any members, but it you only count groups with freegle in title or discription with 50 or more members then you’ll get a good current picture.
Freeage site is a little bit behind but the current standing it 177 freegle groups (50+members) totaling 641,052 members across the UK
The new recycling site http://www.goodnewsforpolarbears.org currently has 337 areas covered in the uk. GoodNewsForPolarBears.org works much like EBay and is growing fast.
The latest numbers (as at 15:45, 24/9/2009) are 179 groups transferred from Freecycle (35.17%) and 839,549 members (40.55%). I’ve just got these from the official Freegle spreadsheet so they are as up to date and accurate as anything. Not suire if I’m allowed to share the location of said spreadsheet though, so I won’t.
Some of the dummy freegle groups will be placeholders for people still waiting to move across. Others are Freecycle setting up fake Freegle groups to disparage Freegle (see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freegleUK/ for eg.)
Ollie, Leeds Freegle Co-owner (ex-Freecycle)
All Northern Ireland groups bar 1 have moved over to Freegle from Freecycle and taken their members with them!
Hi,
As of today, 27/09/2009 at 15.02 we have 874,657 members and rising !!!
ian Barking and Dagenham Freegle
If the groups has been created, and had been advertised, and members had actually *joined* the groups; then this would be an accurate article.
As it stands, 99.99% of the members Freegle boasts, were *moved* to Freegle, by moderators of the previously Freecycle groups.
They’re still members of Freegle groups though aren’t they?
Members joined a local reuse group. They’re still in the same reuse group it’s just that group has changed it’s name and affiliation.
If there had been widespread disatisfaction from members then I’d see your point but the vast majority of groups have seen no complaints at all and lots of support.
My point is that it’s easy to get excited about a group when sensationalist statements are made about how many members they have.
But when you strip away the sleeper members, those that didn’t really notice, those that didn’t really care, what you’re left with, is about 190 GO’s who were unhappy.
In perspective, it tells a different story.
You’re exactly right Ollie. It says a HELL of a lot about the poor leadership within TFN that approaching half of the group owners have been willing to jump ship. That is quite an interesting perspective.
James, you’re almost right except it’s a lot more than 190 group owners – most of the groups that have moved will have more than 1 moderator. We’ve got 6.
About 40% of UK moderators were so unhappy with TFN that they felt they had to leave. This seems like quite a big deal to me. It may not to you.
It would be big news if the entire UK board of a multinational franchise operation split off and formed their own company with 40% of the staff and customers of the old company. I don’t think this is any different.
But we don’t know how many of those moderators wanted to move. Many stayed with Freecycle as they felt they should remain loyal.
So (and to be fair, this *was* my point), all we *know* is we have 190 GO’s who were unhappy and left.
So, based on your comments, we’re looking at 196 people who we can say, with any degree of accuracy, were unhappy. Based on the figures we have here, that’s all we can conclude.
And based on that, I’m underwhelmed when confronted with the idea that it’s a *huge* deal.
Please don’t take this the wrong way, I have no ill feeling toward Freegle, Freecycle, GreenCycle or any other variation of a reuse community. What I’m not on board with, is the incorrect, inflated, sensationalist propaganda being circulated by should-know-better bloggers.
“It says a HELL of a lot about the poor leadership”
No it doesn’t. It doesn’t say anything about anything. The only people who know why the GOs left, are the GOs.
It COULD be issues with the leadership, but one could speculate equally that it’s because a portion of those GOs wanted more power for themselves, and encouraged others to breakaway in an attempt to hide this deception…you know…hypothetically.
When you assert yourself into interpreting what actions means, you had better either be an expert (which none of us are) or unbelievably arrogant (which non…well, I’m not).
All anyone is doing by breaking away, is diluting the environmental impact. Members don’t care about your politics, they don’t care about how it runs, just that it does…and Freecycle does.