Many2Many, a blog about social software, notes the downsides of Meetup.com, an online service that helps facilitate in-person meetings, starting to charge fees of $19/month ($9/month if you start paying now), while still eliciting sympathy for the problem of creating revenue.
Bloggers in San Diego have tried with various success and failure to get meatspace meetings to work here, and meetup’s “service” has been less than wonderful in this area. I know Da Goddess, Mikey and MAS have taken part of such events in the past.
The webdesign meetup for San Diego has done well, and it was a painless way to get people on the WebSanDiego.org mailing list together, so they do well.
I wonder, what do other meetup users think about the changes — and are there ideas about how Meetup could change their revenue model to continue to be a public service people can just “try out.”
Meetup did an awful job with the San Diego meetings. Despite the voting requests of members of this group, it selected the location based off of the vendor that paid the highest. I confirmed this action with the Wesley Clark For President group leader. She walked out of a venue with limiting seating and the owner of the place stating –they couldn’t leave, cause they paid MeetUp already.
Once they sent the SD Blog crew down to a closed office in East Village. This was way before Petco Park and recent renovation. Imagine hanging out in front of a building in a rough neighborhood trying to hook up with people you don’t know at night. Did I mention it was raining? Disaster.
Meetup sucks. I pray they go out of business. Since Joe has this site, all we need is to post the name of a brewpub and a date and we’ll draw more than Meetup ever could for us.
When I started the San Diego Digital SLR Photography Group I considered using Meetup. In the end I developed our own Web site and find it far more flexible and interesting than being stuck in the Meetup community. I suppose it has it’s benefits, but it doesn’t seem much better than a Yahoo group to me.
I set up a Meetup group as a feeder to our Web site, but won’t keep it now they have started charging. One thing I have found is that Meetup groups get good search engine placing, where I can never get http://www.sandiegodslr.com to appear on any reasonable search!
ok, here’s a low tech try at a meetup:
Rock Bottom (La Jolla)
Thursday May 12th, 5:30pm
Wired Dude just picked my favorite brewpub in the county - I’m there!
MAS
I’m reaching out the flickr San Diego Community too.
http://flickr.com/groups/topic/27995/
We’ll see if there is interest.
/WD
you know, upcoming.org would work great for stuff like this. its free and is continuing to be improved.
and no im not involved with them
Awesome WiredDude! I’m posting your link as a post. Awesome!
And Quiiver, we already pull in upcoming.org events into the sidebar of the site, we just need to figure out how to use it to coordinate events. Maybe someone can add the meet-up into upcoming.org?
I am embarassed to say I signed up for upcoming.org and could not figure out how to add an event. Anyone else want to give it a shot?
The San Diego Writers Meetup group is probably going to shift to a Yahoo! Group — more service, less hassle, no cost.