Meetup.com alternatives • Hacker News Board

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#71

Post by darkarmani » Tue, Oct 15, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

robjan wrote: post #32

pera wrote: post #9

Here in Seattle the local Haskell meetup has just "migrated" to a mix of GitHub, Slack, and Google Groups. The reason was the price of Meetup.com ($20/month IIRC). I guess with this announcement many other groups will follow.

The problem is that how do new members discover this meetup? One of the really cool uses of Meetup I have found has been meeting new people and discovering new groups when moving to a new city. That discovery will disappear if everyone does their own thing.

I guess you advertise on Meetup.com and direct users to confirm on a different site. ;)

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#72

Post by starpilot » Tue, Oct 15, 2019, 5:02 PM UTC

chrisa wrote: post #57

I co-organize a React meetup, and seeing the price change update last night made me so... upset and confused - that I decided to build an alternative. My plan is to charge organizers (like meetup does today) to cover costs - but never to charge members to attend free events. I've been looking for a solid project to spend time on, and this just became it. I put up a landing page this morning, and I've already started…

There are many other Meetup alternatives being started or in use, included some not listed in OP article. This is not good. There's too much fragmentation in this space and it'll be hard to have the self-sustaining critical mass, and cross-pollination across communities that made Meetup.com effective.

I'm in tech, sports, and social Meetup groups. I don't want to join 3 new sites to replace this one.

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#73

Post by agumonkey » Tue, Oct 15, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

nickjj wrote: post #14

This is a good reminder of why I stopped going to most local tech meetups ran by meetup.com. Not because of the upcoming $2 fee, but because most of the time it's a 2 hour tech meetup where you spend 15 minutes mingling at the start, then 1 hour and 30 minutes listening to advertisements disguised as talks where you sit down and remain silent and then another 15 minutes mingling at the end. It feels so corporate and…

Maybe the topics were too trend related. I can assure you that emacs / clojure / haskell meetups I attended were nothing but great times. Good crowd, some famous guys, 99.99% interesting talks.

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#74

Post by JoshMnem » Tue, Oct 15, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

I've organized about 500 events through that site. Charging attendees is a terrible idea that will kill Meetup.com and damage communities around the world in the process.

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#75

Post by lone_haxx0r » Tue, Oct 15, 2019, 5:04 PM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #64

lone_haxx0r wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2. Many people said that 8chan was bad because some shooter posted there. Maybe these people think the same about meetup.

8chan is bad because they did nothing to prohibit people from posting the kind of crap that leads to shooters showing up on the forum....

And Meetup did nothing to prohibit people from posting advertisements disguised as meetups.

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#76

Post by mooreds » Tue, Oct 15, 2019, 5:05 PM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #73

nickjj wrote: post #14

This is a good reminder of why I stopped going to most local tech meetups ran by meetup.com. Not because of the upcoming $2 fee, but because most of the time it's a 2 hour tech meetup where you spend 15 minutes mingling at the start, then 1 hour and 30 minutes listening to advertisements disguised as talks where you sit down and remain silent and then another 15 minutes mingling at the end. It feels so corporate and…

Maybe the topics were too trend related. I can assure you that emacs / clojure / haskell meetups I attended were nothing but great times. Good crowd, some famous guys, 99.99% interesting talks.

I agree. The Boulder Ruby meetup (which I help run) has what I'd consider to be a great community and the talks are definitely not ads.

But I could see how some of the meetups that I am a 'member' of but don't attend regularly could be vendor driven.

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#77

Post by chrisa » Tue, Oct 15, 2019, 5:09 PM UTC

starpilot wrote: post #72

chrisa wrote: post #57

I co-organize a React meetup, and seeing the price change update last night made me so... upset and confused - that I decided to build an alternative. My plan is to charge organizers (like meetup does today) to cover costs - but never to charge members to attend free events. I've been looking for a solid project to spend time on, and this just became it. I put up a landing page this morning, and I've already started…

There are many other Meetup alternatives being started or in use, included some not listed in OP article. This is not good. There's too much fragmentation in this space and it'll be hard to have the self-sustaining critical mass, and cross-pollination across communities that made Meetup.com effective. I'm in tech, sports, and social Meetup groups. I don't want to join 3 new sites to replace this one.

Yes, I worry about that too - any ideas about how to fix it?

One of the things I liked about meetup was that many (most?) groups were hosted on it, but I think what this has shown is that meetup had a kind of monopoly in that way (which wasn't good!)

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#78

Post by joecot » Tue, Oct 15, 2019, 5:10 PM UTC

degenerate wrote: post #3

The list: https://emamo.com https://kommunity.com https://joinmobilizon.org/en https://cete.io (not yet launched?) https://eventy.io (not yet launched) And the not-yet-build one by FreeCodeCamp: https://twitter.com/ossia/status/1183845054449930241 I've never heard of any of them. Opinions?

The FreeCodeCamp one is pitched as a self-hosted solution, which means it won't have a network of meetup groups like meetup.com does. If you have a big network of meetups yourself (like, say, FreeCodeCamp), then sure it works. If you're just a small meetup group, it'll be no better than just hoping people find your site on google as is.

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#79

Post by Cshelton » Tue, Oct 15, 2019, 5:27 PM UTC

jborichevskiy wrote: post #11

Somewhat related note: as someone living in a major city I find it increasingly hard to discover relevant events happening soon/around me. Events I'm looking for span a range of interests, artists, bands, topics, hobbies, and causes - hence no one central location has a list of everything relevant to me. So I'm forced to regularly dig through Meetup, Eventbrite, Facebook, Google Events Search, individual sites, indiv…

I'm actually building something right now.

I'm building it because it is a problem I've faced among my friends and well.. the "millennial" generation to begin with. I'm building it first to be used among myself and friends.

I don't want to say too much because to me the solution seems so obvious and I'd like to have something out there and tried on a small scale first, but... the key is not to focus on events directly, but people.

If anyone would like to know more, my twitter is on my profile, DM me there!

Right now it is just me. I'm also currently torn on focusing on the consumer social space (not social network) or the business space. Both seem pretty promising targets but vastly different approaches to marketing.

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#80

Post by timwaagh » Tue, Oct 15, 2019, 5:27 PM UTC

i always thought facebooks greatest strength was their events. i never attended anything through meetup so far. it should at the very least be mentioned as an alternative. not everybody likes sharing data with the Zuck, and that's legitimate, but it's arguably the market leader. and it's free.