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Meetup.com Ends Free Meetups
jalefkowit writes "It was nice while it lasted... massively popular social-organizing service Meetup.com has announced that from here on out, they will be charging a $19/month fee to the designated organizer of each Meetup registered with the service. Regular users (those other than meetup organizers) can continue to use it free of charge, though they suggest that some organizers may wish to split the cost with their members. Users who paid for the Meetup+ service get the fees waived for one group of their choice (if they're not organizers, they can pass this benefit on to someone who is). Here's more information about the move and why they made it."
Pimp My Computerized Dating Match!
I expect to see they're out of business by this time next year.
(This is slashdot, no one needs to read TFA. However, in the interests of not being completely retarded, I will acknowledge that I jumped the gun on that FP - since Meetup is for group gatherings. Oops.)
Based on what I've heard, Meetups are usually fairly popular - I don't think many organizers will have a problem with the fee, and I hope that the company has success with this business model. However, I can see a potential for one-off or irregular meetups to fall by the wayside with the monthly payment structure. I hope they'll have a package structure as well, where you can buy "X" number of meetups and use them at your own pace. Having never used this service, I'm not sure if their range of services are suitable for a package-based option, but I hope they would be.
All of 'em. Dean, Kerry, Bush, Peroutka, hell, fucking Robert Anton Wilson from the Guns and Dope Party.
Folks, the election's over. We all knew meetups were just excuses for horny overstressed campaign workers to explain why they woke up with who the fuck is that and what's she doing in my bed? (She's asking herself the very same thing, that's what.)
what ever happened to good ol' goin to clubs, getting drunk, findin a girl, who is as drunk as u, having a good night, and never seein that girl again, mutually?
the end is near for meetup.com
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
This will just move most of the activities to some other place.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
That's Howard Dean's old organization - an offshoot of his presidential campaign that used meetups early on. They'll be picking up the tab for Meetups of their DFA groups for a while. But I expect someone will come up with a CC version of the 'meetup' structure... you can't patent a gathering of like-minded people can you?
Never pet a burning dog.
of meetup.com. What a great service but now doomed to failure or at least stagnation.
Who never heard of this website?
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
I will acknowledge that I jumped the gun on that FP - since Meetup is for group gatherings.
The two aren't mutually exlcusive, you closed-minded, puritanical clod!
There are probably thousands of other social outcasts, all alone, wondering exactly the same thing.
"you can't patent a gathering of like-minded people can you?"
Patenting congress.
I went to a meetup meeting once, and I was the only one to show up. What a drag. I never botherd again.
San Francisco Photographers
You don't need meetup to have a group - just have regular meetings and post your group info out there, on some random webpage - it'll show up in google for anyone who is looking.
no amount of easy to use software is going to convince random people to congregate together - it's the message that matters. Meetup isn't a service - it's a very limited template system with forums.
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
While I've got your attention; is Google somewhat horked for anyone else? I'm being force-redirected to the XHTML Search version. AKA, Ultra-Lean interface.
However, it's only $9 a month for those of us who are already organizers. My group consistently gets 9 people at the meetup and we usually spend in total $100+ on food and drinks. If everyone that showed up just threw in $1 then the dues for that month would be paid off (and even if I didn't get the whole $9, I'd just top it off myself). Not that big a deal as I see it.
Of course it probably does discourage groups that are not already established from forming or growing...
There are much better ways to organize "real people". Meetup.com was fun while it lasted, but I'll be one of the first to remove links to it from my site.
They offered a decent service while it lasted, and _yes_ they should get something for their efforts; but they _shouldn't_ sabotage their users to get compensation.
They'll die unless they re-create or re-evaluate their efforts within the next 3 weeks.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
It seems to me that the only thing that they've really changed is the addition of newly printed materials (business cards, how to booklets, etc.). They did add back the free email, which had been free, then they charged for.
And the ability for group organizers to collect fees from "free members".
All I really see is vague allusions to NEW services. But nowhere can I find what these services actually are.
All men can fly, but sadly, only in one direction--Down.
in case anyone desperately needs the regular google front page
See, here's the problem: what Meetup did is really not that far beyond a good PHP programmer who knows a thing or two about MySQL. It's cool, but we're not talking about something like Salesforce.com or Turbo Tax Online. This is a simple web app.
And here's the thing, someone is going to recreate Meetup. Their new page will have less brand recognition, and people will probably pay $19 for the Meetup name for a little while. However, this will not last forever. Meetup isn't Microsoft -- they have no extended brand or monopoly power in the face of competition.
Prediction: Meetup.com will be appearing on the Dot-Com Deadpool shortly.
BTW, if I were running Meetup, I would have investigated a completely different approach. These little web apps that become big should think about extending their services for a fee. For example, something like customized invitations for $20 a box or a set of subscriber only options.
Once again, Slashdot advertises for a service that:
A) Has no bearing on my life
B) Has no bearing on most of the SlashDot community
C) IS probably being paid for to mention
D) Means nothing to anyone except the author
E) All of the above
Of course, my spam "modifier" (i.e., biased opinion of the moderators) will send this post to -1 hell, but thanks anyway guys - that just means that you proved my point and I'm correct.
Good going.
Patenting congress.
Fine with me. Just don't patent sexual congress.
Will be able to one-to-one message eachother. This used to be a Meetup+ service ($5 a month). You couldn't even one-to-one message if you were an organizer.
After reading the FAQ, I don't quite see the benefit of this service. They don't seem to offer anything that isn't already freely available (communications and email, they say). As far as professionally printed materials for your club.. anyone who's willing to go to the effort of putting together a club, I'd imagine, would be motivated enough to save the 19 bucks and get things printed themselves. Is there really a market for this service?
I just don't get it.. is there some target group of motivated but lethargic people that are willing to put in the effort to organize, run and manage a club, but somehow, find keeping a list of members' emails a significant barrier to achieving their goals?
I'm ranting a bit, but I'm quite surprised. This is one of the oddest services I've seen on the net. It goes against the intuition of online dating sites, for example. Where the clients may be a little more reserved and slightly anti-social (thus the need for online dating). Meetup is actually targeting what appears to be a socially very active group of clients. I wonder how they're doing.
Any slashdotters using this service? Feel free to enlighten me.They basically provide the same "show everyone that RSVP'd for something" service.
Meetup.com ends having users and meetups.
Stupid like a fox!
This is the first time I've heard of Meetup.com. Too bad, it truly looks interesting. Hopefully someone will clone it soon. Why not Google? It seems like a great application for AdWords.
What exactly is accomplished by meetup.com that couldn't be done through yahoo groups and a free geocities site?
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Another website that I could care less about will cease to exist in a couple of weeks.
Signed up for the London /.ers meetup thingy. Thought it would be a laugh.
/. meetup thingy is dead.
Got spam from spammers.
Got spam from meetup, wanting a new coord.
Got spam from meetup telling about new coord.
Got spam from spammers.
Got spam from meetup, wanting a new coord.
Got spam from meetup telling about new coord.
Got spam from spammers.
Got spam from meetup, wanting a new coord.
I think the London
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
I've been signed up to that site for a while. Unless your group is well established, it's very difficult to get it going. The Dallas Chess meetup group collapsed. The cycling group meets never worked. Most of the members were inactive. The administrators are really killing any chance of these fledgling groups growing with this idea. They've done very little to promote as is. The idea of critical mass somehow managed to escape them. Charge well-established groups with N members but leave the little ones so they have time to grow. As it is, members can't directly message each other with their Meetup+ membership. It is very difficult to organize anything if you can't contact other members via email and only via the forums or the organizer. I've tried explaining critical mass to them but they don't seen to value it. Once a group get big enough, the numbers will attract other people and activities can happen and repeat. Below that level, things just fall apart. No one goes to meets so the newcomers become inactive, etc. When the next newcomers arrive, the old members are already inactive so there's not enough people to do anything.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Try http://meetin.org/ There is most likely a group where you are, (organized by city), all over the world. Instead of being limited to one focus, there are a wide variety of events to choose from and people to meet in each city. If your city is not yet added, you can easily have it added and start planning events!
I also found the Tokyo LUGs with meetup, as the websites google found were way out of date.
My course is inaction. I wonder what will happen to a group whose organizer doesn't pay. How long before I get the boot? Will it be that far ahead of meetup's (seemingly inevitable) demise? At least my popular group won't be missed.
Who's your user, program?
Just use evite.com or something? Does that cost money to? What happened to using IRC to organize people online. haha
www.samuraidreams.com - My Blog
www.samuraifiles.com - Get Some Videos Here
Totally YAWN.
-d
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Here's some of what's new:
Wait...people can send e-mail to each other instead of to a group address? Who'd've thunk it?
Custom, professionally-printed offline materials for your group-- shipped (real mail, not email!) to Organizers for free!
I could make a lot of photocopies for $19 a month.
Optional online tools to make it easy for Organizers to receive money from their members.
If these members are motivated enough to sign up with a Meetup payment system, why wouldn't they just go with PayPal, which they can use for everything else as well?
We expect the number of Meetups will go down at first, but the community will rebound stronger than ever. The Group Fee will weed out less committed groups; the community will be smaller in the near-term, but it will be made up of the best Meetup Groups. ...
Oh, I get it. If you're smart enough to figure out a more productive use for $19 a month, you're just not "committed" enough. Since when was being stupid with money a sign of moral fiber?
What a troll. This was to point out that Meetup is now charging for what was once a free service. It's not an ad. It's just informative. Personally, I'm the organizer of the Current TV group in Milwaukee. We just got off the ground, but now we're going to have to end this unless Current can pay. I heard about the fact that they were charging from this very article (Meetup also sent out an email but I hadn't checked it yet). Meetup was great while it lasted. Now we'll probably just move to a different site.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
A) Has no bearing on my life
B) Has no bearing on most of the SlashDot community
C) IS probably being paid for to mention
D) Means nothing to anyone except the author
E) All of the above
I was thinking the same thing. Who gives a fuck about meetup.com. I never even heard of them.
I remember 3 or 4 years ago I saw a website with 1,000,000 singles looking for a date. It said "register for free, search for free, meet the love of your life". So I signed up. The thing they did not tell you was it cost money to send a message. And you could not delete your profile. So I bet of the 1,000,000 people there, 900,000,000 did what I did- made a profile and never went back. I would hate to be the idiot who sent a message to a dead account.
One would think they could make enough money from advertising. Look at slashdot. They make money, and I ignore all their ad's.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Wow, who the fuck modded this shit up?
/. article.
Pure drivel.
If anything, meetup.com is now fucked. I've never heard of an advertisement announcing a company was going to go under soon. Of course, I bet you think that Jump Domain is now ROLLING IN DOUGH thanks to their
Meetup.com linked their payment options to PayPal.
I'm sure the poor OSS nerds are crying about this wanting their open source dating service /rolleyes
I can't believe this company is still around...
This is pure genius!
I already get emails from half the groups I'm signed up for saying "Your group has no organizer, would you like to volunteer?". Up until now, I didn't volunteer because I wasn't sure I'd have the time -- now that I get to volunteer AND PAY $20 FOR THE PRIVILEGE, I'll get right on it!
I'm sure local meetup groups will really take off now! Next month maybe they'll finally add the "pay $5 and get kicked in the nuts" service we've all been clamoring for!
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I suppose it had just started to catch up.
interesting.
I understand it's commercial requirements. but was it too early??
Anyone who organise a meet-up without needing the help of some crappy dot-com to doesn't deserve to have a social life! Fuck 'em!
They say: What are you interested in?
I say: Making fun of sad, pathetic losers with no lives! Where's the nearest meetup to me, so I can turn up with a huge banner saying "YOU SAD, PATHETIC LOSERS!"?
Time says: "A convenient, non-threatening way to connect to other people who share similar interests and live nearby."
I say: Non-threatening? Not if I have anything to do with it!
They say: Jobs. Meetup.com is looking for an exceptional Project Manager committed to helping our members succeed.
I say: Succeed at what? Having a life?
Christ, in my day, we had Usenet, 2600 and IRC, and we didn't fucking need no steenking meetup.com charging us 19 of your American dollars each time we wanted to get together and pretend that we weren't sad!
Bah! Flogging's too good for 'em!
D.
Massively Popular? You must be kidding.
A useless spam generator imho.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I just visited the site, and every group I looked at (in my area) lacked an organizer. Charging the only people WILLING to put in the TIME (remember, time = money) to organize the group just seems like defunct logic to me.
Why can't they just display ads?
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
Is there anyone else on here who sees the need for a Firefox extention that filters out Slashdot cliches? Maybe it's just me.
Of course, my spam "modifier" (i.e., biased opinion of the moderators) will send this post to -1 hell, but thanks anyway guys - that just means that you proved my point and I'm correct.
Since you're now at +5 it looks like we've proved you wrong, and you're incorrect.
"You really need to stop thinking that the technical implementation is the magic that makes it all work and that you possess the keys to the kingdom by having more than passing knowledge of the technology."
Technology is god.
---
http://www.zopto.com/
It sounds like msn.com is more like the kind of news site your are looking for buddy. After all, it is catering to the uninformed masses.
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
This story is relevant because there are a lot of people who actually went to various Slashdot MeetUps. If you want to bitch about paid ads on Slashdot, call me when the next Roland Piquepaille story is posted.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
Speak for yourself. I use (or at least used to use) meetup.com myself, and know of many other slashdotters who do.
C) IS probably being paid for to mention
It always amuses me when I see somebody claiming this. You do realize that -anybody- can submit stories, right? I've submitted 41 in the past year, 21 of which were accepted. I assure you that I didn't pay for any of them.
hookup.com
How about Slashdot filtering out articles where if you click "Read More..." it then presents a screen with "Nothing to see here move along" just as this one did
That would remove the need for a Firefox filter
So yes, its just you
MEETin.org is a free, much more popular system and has very thriving communities in New York, D.C., and other large metropolitan areas. I was a member of both but meetup.com events never really got big enough to get excited over while MEETin peeps are much more fun to hang out with.
--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com
Quite informative; if only I had mod points!
Plus, meetin.org is free to join. Seems like having your business based solely on a simple website is a recipe for failure (and they are following it quite well.)
What are the odds that some idiot will name his mutex ether-rot-mutex!
too insightful and too funny!
...but there are some kinds of meetups of people for which it ended up being... inappropriate.
We used Meetup to get folks together and reunite local Delphi developers. The first couple of meet-and-greets at a coffee shop were pretty good.
That said, at least at the time, the venues listed for meeting at were sponsored by local businesses, and precious few of them were even passable for a meeting of geeks, especially when it became clear that folks wanted to come out and learn stuff.
The semi-biker-and-pool-hall that, through lack of folks knowing what it was, got voted in due to its convenient location. A quick survey of the hazy interior, and we realized the oops that we made.
There was, of course, no provision for getting the word out on a secondary venue this late in the game, so a quick trip to the convenience store for stationery (I always wondered who bought tape and pens at a store next to a bar :) and some rescue signage was put up for the stragglers.
Oh, wouldn't you know it - our second choice was closed.
My sympathies to the souls who got lost that day :)
So thanks, Meetup, for getting us together in the first place... I'm sorry we couldn't stay :)
-- Ritchie
Binary geeks can count to 1,023 on their fingers
It was nice while it lasted, Howard Dean followers.
ShortFormBlog: Writing a little. Saying a lot.
Never heard of it before, but I figured I'd peek anyways just for fun...
In a city of near a half million people here's the top groups:
Pagan Meetup Group - Meet other local Pagans, Wiccans, Druids, all walks of pagan life - exchange lore, legends and learning. 23 members.
All I can say is WTF?
Darren Hayes Meetup Group; 6 members.
Who the F is that anyways? And why would anyone want to get together to talk about some singner is beyond me.
Next is a vegan meetup group with a whole 3 members. I see no interest in meeting with people based on what I eat. What's next? A steak eaters group?
And it just gets worse... Like a psychic meetup group (or is that a group for people who hear voices?), a vampire group, a witches group... Like WTF is up with that?
Wow! That is one amazingly useless site! I didn't know there were so many mentally retarded people around here, thanks!
I'd rather just hang with normal people, TY.
This is the approach that heroin pushers generally take in the movies; the first uses are free, but once you're emotionally invested it begins to cost you.
Guess I'll have to date-rape the old-fashioned way.
Roland gets paid, but I doubt he has to pay
Meetup.com hosted groups for all sorts of reasons, including enthusiast groups for hobbies (slashdot.meetup.com) and support groups for the people and families dealing with disabilities (autism.meetup.com), so to characterize this just pimping the digital date scene is a bit simplistic.
They had geographical searching. You could input your location and interest, and it would tell you where groups were located, starting at your location and working outward. Yahoo groups can't do that. The yahoo and geocities sites are also full of spam, popups and advertising.
.. the creed of today ..
I wonder if marrying counts as a form of payment.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
They will in some places. Where I live, $19 is enough to take a family of four out to dinner five nights in a row. I can almost guarantee that the Meetups in such places will shrivel up and die, ideally to be replaced by something homegrown.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
1) Bait
2) Switch
3) Rinse
4) Repeat
5) ???
6) Profit ?
I just got an email from the guy who organizes a Meetup event that I sometimes go to. He pointed out http://www.mypeopleconnection.com/ as an alternative.
," and yet only lists a handful of cities in the US. Not even any in Canada. I'm not familiar enough with meetup.com to know if their service went outside the borders of the US of A, but this "alternative" seems lacking.
A quick look at it, and it seems to suffer from a terribly US-centric viewpoint. Their global page has the inspiring text, "My People Connection brings new friends together through a variety of events in cities around the globe
"this is a really good piece of cantoloupe."
"I'm sure local meetup groups will really take off now! Next month maybe they'll finally add the "pay $5 and get kicked in the nuts" service we've all been clamoring for!"
Wow! That's almost as bad as subscribing to slashdot.
On one hand, they talk about having to pay a small fee, but the only numbers they talk about are $9 or $19/month, which are neither even near the small fee they talk about.
Can someone please clear this up for me?
Any one knows for a free replacement for host my own group?
ebay ?
cause yahoo and amazon auctions do so well..
your argument holds, until you hit Juggernaught class.. people sell on ebay, cause that's where the buyers are, and people buy on ebay, cause that's where the sellers are...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
A few months from now, a subtle little link to "meetings.google.com" will pop up on the main search page, and google will completely destroy their technology and convenience the same way they wiped up the floor with mapquest hahahaha
For me, the biggest problem with Meetup.com is that the meetup day/time appears to be abitrarily decided by the site, with no way (as far as I can tell) to change it. If there is a group of people with a common interest in close geographical proximity to each other, it makes more sense to schedule a meetup for a day and time that is most convenient to the majority of the people in the group that are likely to attend.
I run an anime community web site for fans in the North-West of England , and have been organising monthly meetups for over two years. Whilst I generally try to stick to the same schedule for these meetups (last Sunday of every month), I have to be flexible if, for example: the venue we use is not available; it would clash with another event that most of the regulars will be attending (e.g. anime convention); it's on a Bank Holiday weekend; etc.
Whilst there are anime-related Meetup.com groups in the region that NanimeW (and some other anime communities) covers, I've never seen the point in participating due to the inflexible way the meetups are organised.
[Happosai]
1) Register freemeetups.com
2) ???
3) Profit!
I know that several large media conglomerates had considered buying Meetup.com, but they wanted too much money. If they had been bought out, they could have benefited by leveraging off the social network and the marketing footprint of the larger company, not to mention benefiting from enormous cost savings with respect to tech costs and overhead. They'll get some people to pay fees, like campaigns, maybe for a year, but people with small, untested groups will run away. I wouldn't say they'll be out of business in a year, but they certainly will be forgotten or laughed at. They just don't provide enough value for someone to pay $228/year, and I'm not lonely enough to pay dues for a club that might suck.
1) Provide a free service.
2) Get people to depend on that service. Use poorly designed software.
3) Then begin charging an extremely high fee for that service. $19 per month??? What could they be thinking? For an automatic, low-bandwidth service? There are many groups that have only 2 or 3 members, and have not attracted more, but hope to attract more later.
4) Profit? No, go out of business.
Well, that's pretty much the death knell for meetup. The organizer of one of the local meetup groups just stepped down, not caring to pay $19 a month (or even $9 a month, the "special discount rate" they're offering). And if nobody steps forward to organize a meetup group, "this Meetup Group will be frozen and eventually disbanded."
It was kind of neat while it lasted, but given that most of the meetups I've tried to visit in my area never really came together for free, I don't think too many people outside of big cities are going to be willing to pay for it. (And I don't even know how many of those will be. Historically, once-free sites suddenly starting to charge big bucks for their content don't tend to do so well.)
I can understand the need to make money to keep the site alive, the dot-com era being far behind us and all. Still, it's sad to see this service jumping the shark this way. I wonder if it'll still be around a year from now.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
This part of the revision concerns me...
... but when they turn MY facility in to a paid venue, that concerns me and I'm sure would concern coffee shops and book stores (the most common place for meetups)
Can Organizers profit from their Groups?
Sure, as long as you comply with community standards (and Meetup's Terms of Service).
As a business owner I don't mind anyone using my facilities for public free use
If a group is meeting in my place and it is not sponsored by me, it must be free and inclusive of anyone that wishes to join. If I am sponsoring it, then I have the right to exclude anyone who doesn't want to pay dues.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
In 2004, MIT's Technology Review picked meetup.com founder Scott Heiferman as innovator of the year (article text conspicuously absent - some detail here. At the time I couldn't believe he was picked over the accomplishments of so many others. Sure he was able to get 1.4 million users, but that was because the service was free! Sad to see it happen to them; I have always, and always will, question the process by which TR came to their decisions (something to do with the 2004 election hype I'm sure).
would have been...
"I got food poisoning once, I never ate at that establishment again."
You can replace "establishment" with wherever you got the food poisoning. See, in your attempt to make someone else look foolish you ended up making yourself look foolish.
Meh.
Note that most "groups" have a very small number of "members". Also, the number of members is vastly inflated because of a trick. You must become a "member" to get information about where the next meeting will be held. There may be many, many groups with "members" who decided they had no interest in the group, and never visited the group online again, or did anything with the group.
How many people will pay $228 U.S. each year to try an idea of developing a group? The value of the U.S. dollar is dropping fast because the Bush administration is rapidly borrowing money, but the dollar is not worthless.
Would you pay $2,280 over ten years to find other people in your area with an interest in a special breed of cats, for example? Especially when you never attract more than 4 people, and some of them are not very interested?
Also, some groups may have fake members entered by organizers attempting to attract people by making it seem that there is more interest than there really is. I visited one group that showed photos of two very beautiful women who said they were enthusiastic about the group. However, neither of them visited the group again, according to their statistics. A $228 yearly fee makes dishonesty more likely.
A web site for meetings is a good idea, but we need a non-adversarial method of making that happen.
This always happens with closed-source, proprietary solutions. Sooner or later the proprietor becomes abusive.
$19 for 4 people over 5 nights? Where do you live???
They get you hooked on the freebies and then get you on the come-back.
Ah well...only a matter of months before someone comes out with another free version of MeetUp.
GET FREE APPLE STUFF!
the only numbers they talk about are $9 or $19/month, which are neither even near the small fee they talk about.
A person's definition of "small fee" tends to increase along with disposable income. At the same time, if an individual derives a great amount of utility/enjoyment from $SERVICE, then the fee might be considered small when compared to utility/enjoyment derived (regardless of disposable income), i.e. "bang for the buck".
(Yes, I combined "bang", "buck", "enjoyment" and "$SERVICE". Please focus.)
You don't believe the MeetUp fee is money well spent? That's quite all right: spend your money elsewhere, don't spend it at all, do whatever works for you. To each his own and all that. (For the record, I don't use MeetUp either.)
Cheers!
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Note also that now organizers must give their mailing addresses to Meetup.com.
More steps commonly taken by proprietary services and manufacturers:
1) Make a privacy policy assuring all the privacy anyone could want.
2) Collect a lot of private information.
3) Change the privacy policy to allow a lack of privacy, because that is more profitable. Include all the people who trusted the old assurances in the new lack-of-privacy policy.
It's the old, "I mean what I say until I decide I don't mean what I say" trick, and it is legal in the United States, apparently. (Many companies have done this. There was a story on Slashdot about it being legal.)
Ninety-five cents per person per dinner? Holy hell, and I thought my local $5 (per person) Chinese Buffet was great.
I remember the Livejournal meetups. The very last one i went to was a pure f'in sausagefest. Only one female showed up. The rest consisted of a bunch of guys who didn't look like they could get a date either(okay, one was married).
This was after me and somebody waited around 2 hours looking for others. After everyone gathered, I realized the oddity that the meetup mainly consisted of mails, from a userbase that was 60% female. Got up and left after 15 minutes and never came back.
I saw pictures for subsequent lj meetups, and they looked like weight watchers meetings, sorry to say.
Meetup.com has got to have the worst interface for a website I've seen. It seems to involve several links just to get to your area code's page of events. I signed up for about 10-13 meetups, and just about all of them were cancelled due to lack of interest.
Countdown to fuckedcompany in 3...2..1...
Just use MySpace
Butthead Vendor
eBay is the ultimate cgi-script that generates revenue.
Compare Meetup with eBay, not Microsoft.
Thanks, I didn't get the word FUCK enough in your post.
Thanks for the support: "Tin Foil Hat": Disinformation campaign noticed by poster at "gorilla news" independent news site
Like many virtual communities, BXers like to meet in Real Life sometime. Now no-one is going to stump up a monthly fee. Ah well.
Free your books at Bookcrossing.com
Were you there to talk about Livejournal or were you there to prey on teenage girls? You are so fucking pathetic.
Not that i've really used either, but this seems to fill the same need at meetup and is being actively and aggressively developed at the moment. An API was just released for it, for example.
It's developed by Andy Baio of waxy.org who has a track record of doing neat things.
Has it not occured to the above 2 posters that this person is obviously not from NA or Europe? Likely India judging by his nick...
Imagine for a moment a world without hypothetical situations...
Meetup.com was/is fundamentally flawed and I thought so from the very beginning.
The real problem is that the way that meetup's work are too restrictive. So I was registered in a group that had like a thousand members or so, scattered around the US. All these members had some kind of common interest or were members of a forum or what have you, so it was a reasonably good group of people who wanted to meet each other.
The idea of meetup.com was to, once a month, send a meetup invite to everybody in some geographic area. Unfortunately, we were scattered, as most random selections of people are, and unless you could get 3 or more people to confirm, the meetup got cancelled. And you couldn't get information on other cities meetups. And you couldn't schedule your own meetup time/place.
In other words, meetup.com took all the work that you didn't need it to take. People are quite capable of scheduling meetings. People are quite capable of picking places. What people need help with is:
-Notifying other interested people.
-Getting RSVPs and such.
-Resolving schedule conflicts.
If meetup had allowed people to select areas that they wanted to monitor for meetups, and have it email/notify them whenever somebody has a meetup in that area (perhaps for the given group only), and then an easy way to send an reply saying they'll be there... that would be perfect. That's all that's needed. Also add the ability to see all meetups regardless of area or in a given area.
When people in my group wanted to have a national meeting, they resorted to forums and email. Why? Because meetup.com was fucking useless for real world meetings. It only created artificial once a month meetings that usually never actually occurred.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
About a year before this site opened, I considered developing the exact same idea for the website (kicks self in ass over and over again).
"hey, could you pass me a paper towel? er.. I mean... DEPLOY ABSORBTION PANEL!"
Most likely India, though the same amount of money would feed a family in Mexico for about the same length of time.
www.meet2cheat.com
Just like everybody else here, I'm wondering what possessed Meetup.com to charge this much money, and to make the volunteer organizer responsible for the bill. Then I took a look at the size of the company.
Anyone else think 26 full-time employees, a full board of directors, and apparent VC funds are overkill for a company like this? Sure, they bring a lot of value added features to organizing local groups, but this isn't an amazingly difficult web app, and with VC funding on board, you just know the target valuation will force aggressive community-killing fees.
Charging a flat high fee for groups of any size makes no sense. This will be another good idea, bad execution dot-com failure. If they have to charge those kinds of rates, it's clear that they didn't bootstrap the company in a judicious manner. It's too bad, because they provide a nice service. Evite.com will probably get some of their refugees.
1-10 members: Free
10-20 members: $2
20-50 members: $5
50-100 members: $10
100 members: $20
Unless disk space is their huge cost problem, having 20,000 5 member groups... but I suspect that isn't the case.
This way small groups don't shrivel up and die.. and if you've got up to 20 members even the most willing moderator could pony up $2 a month. If you're getting a LOT of members showing up, why not be able to ask for a buck or two to help.. rather than sticking it to the 3 people that show up once a month?
Never heard of them, but I've been using OKCupid.com for ahwile now. If you remember TheSpark.com from back in the day, its the same people who ran it, so aside from the romance potential, you also have a bunch of funny tests and personality analysis. Its a good way to kill time if you're bored, heh.
One of Meetup's biggest uses was organizing meetings during the campaign season-- I know every Democratic presidential candidate had meetups. Now that you have to pay, these seem like they may run afoul of the campaign finance rules that require out-of-pocket expenses to be reported to the FEC as donations in-kind.
i'd advised people looking for an alternative to check out . from the site itself: "Upcoming.org is a collaborative event calendar, completely driven by people like you. Enter in the events you're attending, comment on events entered by others, and syndicate event listings to your own weblog". it also uses restapi for inputting events and has syndication for specific venues and locations which is great for integration with other sites.
MilkMiruku
So are they going to change their name to PayUp.com?
i'd advised people looking for an alternative to check out upcoming.org. from the site itself: "Upcoming.org is a collaborative event calendar, completely driven by people like you. Enter in the events you're attending, comment on events entered by others, and syndicate event listings to your own weblog". it also uses restapi for inputting events and has syndication for specific venues and locations which is great for integration with other sites.
MilkMiruku
It is simply amazing how bad is the management of technically oriented companies.
Or maybe Meetup knows something we don't. Some of the groups will pay the $228/year until they can make other arrangements. So, Meetup will have a sudden influx of money. Maybe they know that Meetup will die, and just want to extract as much money as possible before that happens.
If you have a group, the best thing is to have a web site for your group. Then you aren't dependent on whatever sink-the-company idea someone has this month.
what ever happened to good ol' goin to clubs, getting drunk, findin a girl, who is as drunk as u, having a good night, and never seein that girl again, mutually?
/.. People here don't do that, never have, and never will... leave their parents basement.
What do you mean whatever happened to that? This is
Cruel....real cruel.
what ever happened to good ol' goin to clubs, getting drunk, findin a girl, who is as drunk as u, having a good night, and never seein that girl again, mutually?
It got replaced by toothing.
Haven't tried it yet (just signed up), but a Technorati search shows that Upcoming.org has been recommended by some as being a good alternative to Meetup.com. The front page says "Upcoming.org is, and always will be, free."
evyone move? they chaging $ hear?
go http://www.meetin.org/
Says 'Be right back'. I've been waiting here for 5 days.