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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."
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?
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.
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.
"Who never heard of this website?"
I heard about it, I even used it, but frankly, meetup.com makes some of the same old tired mistakes too many websites make.
The site isn't transparently easy to navigate. There's no way (or I didn't see one) to search by meet-up time or day. ("Hey I'm free Tuesdays, what's going on Tuesdays.")
To see the people or the number of people signed-up for a particular meet-up, you had to register with meet-up.com, then "join" that meet-up. Since meet-ups were canceled when fewer than three people signed up, you couldn't effectively browse for what looked like it was really going to happen without first signing up. Pain in the ass.
You can't indicate, for a meet-up you are interested in, that the meet-up time doesn't work. You can vote for a location, but there's no easy way to indicate what sort of locations work for you: "I don't like smoky bars; I can do in the city but not the 'burbs; near the subway". And once you did sign up for a meet-up, you kept getting annoying email asking that you confirm.
Some of these things make sense, but much of it was the typical website desire to control and constrain its users, probably at the behest of marketeers who wanted to "track" everything and everybody.
And the irony is, if by registering, a user could make a profile of what works and doesn't work for him for a meet-up, the marketeers could have mined a hell of a lot more information, information that users would have willingly given.
But since the site was a pain in the ass to use, without that pain benefiting me in any way, I stopped using it.
Websites need to realize that people aren't going to change their lives to conform to what's easiest for marketeers to track. When they do realize that -- like craigslist -- they become popular. When they don't -- well, it's time to start charging fees and finding cheaper offices.
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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.
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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!
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 agree and I'm sure Google will only help their demise by adding a "Google Meetup" feature to be followed about 2 months later by Yahoo. Seems to be the trend as of late.
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