1. Liz Lawley on April 14, 2005 10:32 AM writes...

I've wondered for a while how they'd deal with the need to make money. I think they would have been wiser to go after targeted sponsors for groups and group pages, and/or revenue from targeted venues.

There are too many other ways for groups to gather--Yahoo and Google both provide options for that. I can't imagine that most of the organizers will be willing to pay out of their own pockets for the "privilege" of doing the work of coordinating a group. I know I won't, which means the local blogger meetup probably won't ever get off the ground, at least not via that site.

Seems like a bad move.

2. Mike on April 14, 2005 10:39 AM writes...

Take a look at http://upcoming.org which has been adding features and looked like a decent alternative to Meetup.com even before the $19 fee got added. Unlike Meetup.com, the data isn't proprietary -- you can tag events, get your event information out through RSS and the API, etc.

3. Cliff Allen on April 14, 2005 12:19 PM writes...

I just posted an article on my personal Web site that compares two free event services, ours and another, that can replace Meetup:
http://www.allen.com/cgi-bin/gt/tpl.h,content=122

I had forgotten about Upcoming.org, another good replacement.

4. Bryan Price on April 14, 2005 3:13 PM writes...

$19/yr, I can see. $19/month? Give me a break! I've been hounded down with emails to become an Organizer (which I now recognize is different than "host" although I didn't realize it at the time), and they've seriously shot themselves in the foot.

I already thought that they had gone tiered with MeetUp+. Evidently that wasn't enough.

5. milk on April 14, 2005 3:45 PM writes...

so; upcoming.org, craigslist.org, evdb.com, evite.com, suretomeet.com. anything else to consider?

6. meetup.com a past company on April 14, 2005 4:18 PM writes...

Yeah right on, fuck the meetup.com. I worked my ass off getting people to their fucking web and what did I get? A bill 9 Dollars a month???? Later on it's 19 Dollars??? Buenas noches fuckers. Who's is going to pay that. Appart from the Western world I can't imagine people paying for this shit in for ex. China (where I live). For that money I get my own website and push it on google. Meetup.com??? Let's write some protest letters to them. Maybe together it works. Their managers must be nuts. Classical lose-lose situation. Let's protest!

7. Dimitar Vesselinov on April 14, 2005 5:51 PM writes...

Meetup.com...Gone In 60 seconds...The new business model won't work. Why? There are many free alternatives. Social networks. Yahoo and Google groups. Blogs.

8. Scott Heiferman on April 14, 2005 7:21 PM writes...

Thanks for some kindness in there, David.

Let me address our commitment to the "committed" groups and related it to Craigslist. When Craigslist charges for real estate or job listings, those fees increase the quality of the Craigslist product in those categories. Those that pay are more likely to be serious, spam-free, quality listings that people want to see. It's very similar for Meetup. Today, most of the Meetups that people create are not actively managed by those that created them. With a fee, people looking for Meetups will be much more likely to come across a Meetup that'll be a great experience. This is similar to eBay and the innovation of goto.com (which became overture/yahoo and inspired google adwords).

Meetup isn't for everyone. People can cobble together a freebie email list, evite, and a half dozen other sites... but Meetup just works better -- and increases odds of success -- for those that are serious about growing a local community group about something important to them.

And by the way, we're not "facing some serious financial issues" (as you say). It's not 1998, we need to figure out how to be sustainable before it's a problem.

We're OK. Plenty of Meetups have already decided to pay and are sharing the cost among the group (usually $.50-$2/month per person). With revenue, we'll make the site more & more better able to help people. Definitely better than a freebie site could ever do or sustain.

9. Jon Garfunkel on April 15, 2005 5:47 PM writes...

Scott- I'm amazed at how few people in the blogspace understand the business realities of anything (e.g., "Please make everything cost-free, forever, since the world depends on that."). What you did remarkable was ask the members for money directly, instead of trying to net a pre-existing organization with a large fee. So this in fact supports the values of emergent leadership!

The challenge though is for the pre-existing organizations, which have pre-existing leaders who don't have to follow the whims of any emergent ones. Also, such structured organizations are likely to want additional online features besides RSVP tools. These groups should expect to either pay a service provider, or to host their own.

As for ad-hoc groups-- yes, they're always be another free service to reach out to people. I guess David and others are lamenting that big-M Meetup may have peaked in reach. As I wrote in my comparison of devotion by Meetup members to Abuzz members (of yesteryear...), I find it amazing that people get emotionally tied to systems in which they are not able to, or not willing to, invest dues in the service.

But little-m meetups are here to stay.

10. scott heifermann on April 17, 2005 1:28 AM writes...

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[ Ed. Note: This post, falsely purporting to be from Scott, has been disemvoweled. -clay ]

11. David Weinberger on April 17, 2005 9:50 AM writes...

Not only does Scott Heiferman usually spell his last name correctly, he also punctuates better than that. And he's funnier.

12. Dee on April 19, 2005 7:31 PM writes...

What meetup should be doing is not weeding out the inactive groups by charging organisers but weeding out the inactive members and charging them like $12 for the year - but I suspect they'd see their numbers drop like a stone from their current 1.7 million
but at least you'd be left with a core of dedicated supporters for the site.

For our meetup events we'd estimate 95% or more of the people online will never actually get off their butts and go meet people in real life. Our turn out rates at meetup.com are something like 1% to 3% of total members each month.

We've seen groups with over 6,000 members not post more then 5 messages on the message board - Scott himself only had about 25 postings on the meetup site on the day he made his annoucement (11th April 2005) - so if the co-founder of meetup.com doesn't use his own website why should others?

13. Crosbie Fitch on April 20, 2005 7:03 AM writes...

Hmmm...

I would have thought that you'd let people that added value (by coordinating a thriving group) have free membership, whereas people who enjoy that added value pay a membership fee.

Doing the converse is 'interestingly radical'.

Perhaps it can be applied to other situations? E.g. "Find 5 friends to accompany you on your holiday and we'll put a 50% surcharge on your hotel room!"

But, seriously, this is a new pricing inversion that probably started with iTunes.

"We can only commercially exploit those of our users who have more money than sense. We cannot make money out of users who are savvy enough to find a free alternative. Therefore we deliberately select out the savvy users by introducing a fee that makes them run for the hills. What we are then left with are people that we can fleece."

This is why there is pressure to raise the price of downloadable singles. It's nothing to do with 'competing with free', it's figuring out the price that the market of non-savvy users will bear. "We've now established that they will pay a dollar for a single when they can get it for nothing. It remains to be seen whether a higher price point will bring in more revenue, i.e. many of those paying a dollar may be even happier paying two dollars because they then get to think that the music they're buying is worth more."

So, Meetup has simply realised that if it is ever going to be commercially viable, now would be a good time to ditch the savvy beta-testers and focus solely on those users happy to pay for the facilities.

14. Bob Watkins on April 21, 2005 2:39 PM writes...

I've been following the outrage being vented on Meetup's message forum since the change was announced. Members have confessed a virtual addiction to watching the drama unfold.

I'd like to make an analogy between Meetup's growth and development, and what we know of brain physiology (since Meetup is acting as the "brains" coordinating these local meetups.)

As the brain developed, old parts were not discarded. Instead, new parts were added. So, we still have the ancient animal instinct parts of our brains, and they still do some useful functions for us, but the newer abstract reasoning parts create the context and meaning in which the older parts operate.

Meetup is throwing away its "old brain" instead of adding to it. And the spasms being felt throughout the world of meetup are sympomatic of this surgery.

But it didn't have to do so. It could have simply frozen its current functionality as a free service, and charged a fee for new functionality going forward.

Some groups would never convert, but many would; and the overall Meetup would have been better for it. Maybe Scott felt he couldn't afford to take this approach. But I fear very much that he will find he can't afford NOT to.

Nature is often the best teacher.

15. bgrier on April 27, 2005 2:38 PM writes...

My wife and I discovered a GeoCaching meetup group in our home town (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada), through meetup.com. Turns out it was the largest GeoCaching meetup group. The folks at the monthly event were friendly and fun. Eventually, My wife and I became the 'organizers' of the meetup group.

Then they started charging. Having a small amount of online design skill, I knew the Edmonton group could do better - so we found a very good online Content Management System (Mambo) and an inexpensive host. We now have our own community site, with all the features that WE need...not a prepackaged solution that misses our mark.

Brad
GeocachingEdmonton.com