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Businesses Communications The Almighty Buck

Meetup.com Ends Free Meetups 281

Posted by timothy from the capitalist-roaders dept.
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."
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Meetup.com Ends Free Meetups More

Meetup.com Ends Free Meetups

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  • You heard it here first ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by B3ryllium ( 571199 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @01:19AM (#12220707) Homepage
    Pimp My Computerized Dating Match!
    • (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 str

  • And so ends the meetup.com dream (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @01:25AM (#12220743)
    I expect to see they're out of business by this time next year.

    • Re:And so ends the meetup.com dream (Score:5, Funny)

      by k-0s ( 237787 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @02:30AM (#12221052) Homepage
      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.

    • Did you look at the team members and board of directors in the "about meetup" section? They are going to need to pull in a heck of a lot of money to keep all of those people gainfully employed. You could probably set up and run the whole operation with one manager and a couple of designers, maybe an external accountant contacted once a year to do up the wages.

      I wouldn't deny anyone providing a valuable service the right to make money from that service, but their operation is waaay too bloated to stay afl

      • They want to get bought out - so they're "monetizing their assets".

        I predict we'll see a rise in

        1. signatures saying "slashdot meet-up in the #### area - click here".
        2. same deal with other blog services
        3. someone else starts a free service
        4. meet-up offers a meet-up - lite for groups w. less than N members
        5. meet-up goes tits-up

    • How to self destruct, in 4 easy steps. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @08:04AM (#12222116) Homepage

      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.

      • 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

      • 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

      • 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 [meetup.com].

        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 targe

  • whatever happened to... (Score:5, Funny)

    by kangpeh ( 875381 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @01:26AM (#12220754)
    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?

  • alternative? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SolitaryMan ( 538416 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @01:27AM (#12220760) Homepage Journal
    This will just move most of the activities to some other place.

  • Heard this from Democracy for America (Score:5, Insightful)

    by payote ( 621854 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @01:28AM (#12220763)
    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?

  • Am I the only one? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by npietraniec ( 519210 ) <npietran.resistive@net> on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @01:28AM (#12220770) Homepage
    Who never heard of this website?

    • Re:Am I the only one? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by orthogonal ( 588627 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @01:45AM (#12220858) Journal
      "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.

      • Re:Am I the only one? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Sargondai ( 25502 )
        Well, it doesn't solve all of your issues, but I'd recommend checking out http://www.mypeopleconnection.com/ as an alternative to meetup.com
      • looks like you're halfway to a business model, or at least what the concept needs to be a lot more workable. Consider taking it the rest of the way.

      • Re:Am I the only one? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Lemuel ( 2370 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @07:25AM (#12221945)
        They did fix some of your issues in last fall's overhaul. They don't cancel meetings with less than three people anymore. They created the role of organizer, who picks a location, hopefully by consulting with the others through email or the group message board. There is also a place to add a comment when you RSVP, so you can say that you can't make it because it is in the 'burbs. You can control the email you get and none of it is for confirmation, just reminding.

        You still can't search by date, though, and you do have to belong to a meetup group to see what is going on with it.

    • No and for a reason! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      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 intere

  • Most of us never heard of this site before (Score:4, Funny)

    by Corpus_Callosum ( 617295 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @01:30AM (#12220781) Homepage
    To prove it, I quote:
    Sorry, our server experienced an error, and is unable to process your request. This may be a temporary problem due to an upgrade, so please try again in a few minutes. If the problem persists, you can report a bug in our help section.
    A slashdot effect support group, anyone?

  • Big deal (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Cyn ( 50070 ) <cyn.cyn@org> on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @01:33AM (#12220799) Homepage
    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.
    • True, you don't need meetup to have a group, however meetup.com provided was a central place where you could find all those groups. If you check your local city you'll find heaps of groups that are surprising.

      The pity about this is that while some groups may not mind the fees there are many little groups that are tried and another hurdle has been placed in their way.

      It's a pity that they can't organise some kind of cheaper system. Really, meetup doesn't provide that much.

      You have to wonder how long i

  • At first I thought it was bad... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by taxman_10m ( 41083 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @01:35AM (#12220811)
    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...
    • Of course it probably does discourage groups that are not already established from forming or growing...

      Yup, that's exactly what it's going to do. I am the organizer of two groups, both of which have less than 5 people who make it monthly. And that $9/month fee only lasts for this year on top of it all. I certainly can't expect nor wouldn't expect the one or two people who show up to start kicking in $4 a piece or whatever, so I plan to resign as organizer.

      Oh well. It was fun while it lasted. :(

  • To hell with that... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bergeron76 ( 176351 ) * on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @01:36AM (#12220814) Homepage
    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.

  • Braindead (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fremen ( 33537 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @01:37AM (#12220822)
    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 [fuckedcompany.com] 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.
    • See, this is why things like Livejournal is still around, and other stuff has gone to the dogs.

      Anything that depends on the size of its community to stay afloat shouldn't be entirely non-free. That especially becomes true if what your site is can be replicated in less than 100 man-hours of work. Someone will clone you, and all your business will go away.

      I can't imagine anything like myspace staying around if all of a sudden it went to a membership system. People wouldn't fork up the money, and the a

      • 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...

    • Re:Braindead (Score:5, Insightful)

      by snorklewacker ( 836663 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @02:15AM (#12220997)
      > 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.

      No, it isn't technically complicated at all. But there's not a whole lot of business plans that will fly on ad revenue alone, and meetup's niche is too small. I'm surprised citysearch or digitalcity didn't borg them long ago.

      I doubt you or I could even pay the hosting costs for such a site on ad revenue alone, let alone paying support and maintenance. 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. There's just a lot more to running a business than that.

      • Re:Braindead (Score:2, Insightful)

        by cgenman ( 325138 )
        there's not a whole lot of business plans that will fly on ad revenue alone, and meetup's niche is too small.... I doubt you or I could even pay the hosting costs for such a site on ad revenue alone, let alone paying support and maintenance.

        But save maintenance (which shouldn't be too much once things are up and running) costs and income scale with userbase. They should be able to get hosting that meets their needs for 40 bucks a month. If not, they should be able to split a colo for the cost of a commo
      • 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. There's just a lot more to running a business than that.
        Yep, "build it and they will come" is not necessarily the case.

        A myriad of empty empty web boards, low traffic email lists, empty chat rooms, and forgotten IRC channels are proof of that.

      • 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. There's just a lot more to running a business than that.

        Who said that the next implementation of Meetup would be run as a business? This is Slashdot, the biggest open source news site lacking a business plan there is. Most people reading this page would do something like this because it's cool or becau
    • 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.

      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/ [mypeopleconnection.com] as an alternative.

  • I don't quite get the point.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by proteonic ( 688830 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @01:44AM (#12220854)

    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.
    • What they offer is a place for someone to go to find groups to meet with on subjects they are interested in. Meetup provides an initial place to publicize the group, so someone can try starting one even if they don't know too many other people who share their interest. I organize the Spanish group in Akron and while there may not be a huge number of people who will see the meetup page [meetup.com] for it it is more than will see a page I put together somewhere else, and it is easier to do.

      The meetup isn't just targe
    • I will second your post... what does this site do that I can't manage via Evite or Yahoo Calendar? Or manually updating my Outlook calendar offline?

      Sure, automated bookings and invites and calendaring online is nice and convenient, but $9/month is ridiculous.
      • Evite is geared toward bars, restaurants, and events rather than groups meeting for a common interest. I'm not quite sure how Yahoo Calendar offers anything like Meetup at all.

        The $9 a month is a pain and it may be fatal to meetup.com, but only the organizer pays and they can collect from attendees.
  • 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?

    • Geo-matching (Score:4, Informative)

      by Jetson ( 176002 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @04:24AM (#12221407) Homepage
      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.

  • Mmm... (Score:2, Informative)

    by mlk ( 18543 )
    Signed up for the London /.ers meetup thingy. Thought it would be a laugh.

    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 /. meetup thingy is dead.

  • Shooting Self in Foot (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Comatose51 ( 687974 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @02:00AM (#12220935) Homepage
    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.
    • Critical mass is definitely the problem. One of my groups, for the Investor's Business Daily, went from 2 to 10+ in one meeting for no obvious reason. It has done well since then. The other two aren't doing so well. The Chinese language group will get one or two people who decide it is a waste of time and quit going. Then one or two other people will go and decide the same thing. The trick is to get everyone to go at once, but that is hard to do. There's nothing like that loser feeling when you go to

  • Meetin.org (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @02:00AM (#12220936)
    Try http://meetin.org/ [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!

  • Meetup.com is being silly (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jane Hackworth ( 872492 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @02:06AM (#12220963)
    According to the article:

    Here's some of what's new:

    • Free one-to-one email for all members of your Group!

    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 brilliant idea! (Score:5, Informative)

    by NMerriam ( 15122 ) <NMerriam@artboy.org> on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @02:15AM (#12220994) Homepage
    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!
    • 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?

    • 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!

      Exactly!

      Next month maybe they'll finally add the "pay $5 and get kicked in the nuts" service we've all been clamoring for!

      That would almost be greater evidence of their lack of business sense than charging to be an admin. You can get a lot more then $5 for kicking someone in the nuts, especially if you are a good looking gal decked out in some

    • What a brilliant idea!-Pay-Dot. (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "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.

  • There is a better similar system (Score:4, Informative)

    by unk1911 ( 250141 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @03:02AM (#12221137) Homepage
    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 [blogspot.com]

  • We used it to start with... (Score:3, Funny)

    by nimblebrain ( 683478 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @03:25AM (#12221208) Homepage Journal

    ...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 [calgarydelphi.org]. 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

  • 1) Bait
    2) Switch
    3) Rinse
    4) Repeat
    5) ???
    6) Profit ?
  • 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?
    What do you mean "what ever happened to ..." ? This is Slasdot, we are the nerds the news is for.

  • What, $19/month or "small fee"? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kosi ( 589267 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @05:41AM (#12221645)
    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?
    • $9 is lunch. $19 is dinner, without the wine.

      Meetup's prices are not unresonable to those that would be using the service. Foisting the charges on one member of the group, however, will likely not go over too well.

    • 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
      • A person's definition of "small fee" tends to increase along with disposable income.

        I know, and because of that I always check such stuff against Joe Average's disposable income. And FTPOV, neither $9 nor $19 / month are small.

        You don't believe the MeetUp fee is money well spent?

        That is irrelevant in matters of the fee being small or not.
  • 1) Register freemeetups.com
    2) ???
    3) Profit!
  • 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 outsi
    • It's certainly the deathnell for the Las Vegas wifi Meetup! I took over as organizer of it about six months ago, when the previous organizer dropped out. He had it being held at a Starbucks, and I moved it to a nearby Coffee Shop with free wifi.. We're probably like many small meetups, 20-30 people actually registered with the group, but only a tiny subset of that who actually come to the the monthly meets. In fact, the last couple of months, It's been me and one other guy showing up. In fact, tonight's the

  • This part concerns me ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by adzoox ( 615327 ) * on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @08:21AM (#12222191) Journal
    This part of the revision concerns me...

    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 ... 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)

    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.

  • Just like a crack pusher... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by IdJit ( 78604 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @08:58AM (#12222362)
    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.
  • Not that i've really used either, but this [upcoming.org] 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 [waxy.org] who has a track record of doing neat things.

  • name change? (Score:3, Funny)

    by mapmaker ( 140036 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @01:53PM (#12225206)
    So are they going to change their name to PayUp.com?

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