5,000,000 Observations!
iNaturalist hit 5,000,000 observations today! Its been just 2 years and 8 months since we hit our first million observations. The bulk of these observations are from North America, but observations hail from 246 (out of 253) countries. New Zealand, Australia, and Western Europe are also well represented. Much of Africa and the Middle East are relatively poorly represented.
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Have you guys thought about a partnership with eBird? They are making a big push to get more pictures and audio verified records. You both have so much juicy data to share.
@cullen now works with eBird!
Congratulations to you and Ken-ichi and all who have played a role in developing iNaturalist! I predict the site will be at 10 million observations within 18 months.
Regarding eBird, I actually like iNaturalist's independence from that and other sites. I was one of the very early adopters of eBird and have almost stopped using it altogether in favor of iNat. The missions of both are quite different. Specifically, eBird may be placing emphasis on documentation (NEEDED!), but by far, most of their data is unverifiable since there is no media associated, and I think it will continue to be that way for the foreseeable future. The last thing I feel iNat needs is a multitude of unverifiable records. That said, eBird has its place and value, as it seeks to catalog bird occurrence, including the birds where obtaining media is difficult or impossible, so I am not attempting to disparage that site here. The other main issue is that eBird is set up in a way that allows volunteer approved reviewers (often less experienced than the contributor) to unilaterally determine when a record is valid or not, which flies in the face of what I view iNat's mission to be. There are a lot of angles within this topic to explore and I would leave open the possibility of something being able to be worked out at some point, but at this time, it feels like the two sites are far apart in overall mission.
On to the next 5 million obs and beyond!
Congratulations, iNaturalist! Maybe we'll get those last few countries in the next 5 million!
Minor correction @loarie : 2 years and 8 months, not 3 years and 8 months :-)
whoops thanks Carrie - fixed
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