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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."
I expect to see they're out of business by this time next year.
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.
Who never heard of this website?
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.
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...
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.
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.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
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
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.
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?
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.
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
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!
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.