How many people signed up for Biketown on Day 1? Here’s a rough idea

I started collecting member numbers for people that signed up for the bikesharing. I was curious about how the numbers clustered and who was fastest at registering when it opened at 6:30am. I thought I’d collect a few to use the German tank problem to approximate the number of signups. Later someone found a way to see a list of all registrants, so I was able to fill in some data, especially to get the most-recent signups.

I’d estimate that Biketown got 500 to 600 signups in the first 12 hours. Keep in mind this is an inference based on blackboxed data, and I could be completely wrong. Read on for more, including how early public figures signed up.

The following numbers were all shared with me, with the exception of “public” individuals like Leah Treat. Generally they are people on Twitter that you might recognize from the local community. There’s a little bit of approximation, so don’t take these numbers as being precise, but they are likely pretty close.

So, who was first? Apparently Sarah Innarone is an early riser. She appears to be the fifth signup, and the first who has shared their number or is a public figure. The next public figure was Leah Treat, who was the 82nd signup.

What about other people? Adam Herstein was 27th and I was 28th. Jessica Roberts was 32nd. Alan Kessler was 42nd and has an easy-to-remember number also. Emily Guise was 213th, Ted Buehler was 340th.

As of 5:30pm, 11 hours after registration opened, I’d guess there are about 500-600 registrations. It’s hard to be accurate, if anything that guess is larger than the actual number.

Feel free to include your number (or at least the final 4 digits) below. It’s relatively safe to do so- it’s like revealing your username in terms of security risk.

Edit 6/15 2pm: Biketown announced they have closed this minor privacy hole and are changing all user numbers: “We’ve learned that this function was turned on by default, and as a result, members were able to obtain the names and member numbers of other members. We care about your privacy and realize that some of you may not want this information searchable.”