For those on Asia - Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong, you could consider http://peatix.com
Meetup.com alternatives
191–200 of 300 posts
Re: Meetup.com alternatives
#192I used to run a local web marketing meetup in East Idaho. It grew to about 260 people! We used meetup.com and I loved that...
Then I discovered that Facebook Groups and setting up events there worked just as well for us. RSVPs, reminders, notifications, etc all built in.
I since retired that meetup due to moving out of the State for a short time, but if I were to start again I would probably still use Facebook.
Re: Meetup.com alternatives
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
$15 a month is $180 a year. Imagine you want to have some small hyper local group such as Memorial Park Dog Owners. Obviously, members will not pay for such a group, but the organizer is on the hook for almost $200 a year. Hard to create community with such prices. Active groups of over 250 members? The pricing starts getting better.
> Imagine you want to have some small hyper local group such as Memorial Park Dog Owners. Obviously, members will not pay for such a group, but the organizer is on the hook for almost $200 a year. It is 4 big macs a month. It is 3 Starbucks coffees a months. It is 3 cans of soda bought as singe units in a super market a month. If a group cannot afford it, then maybe stop pretending that the group needs RSVPs or other…
"If a group cannot afford it"
The group does not pay for the meetup, the organizer does. Most social meetups are created by the kindness of the organizer, who want nothing in return. $15 a month is a lot of kindness.
My fictitious group was an example. I do not like dogs. :) But your solution goes back to my original comment. The article lists functional alternatives, but there is no way for someone to find the group, unless they explicitly searched for it. Most end up searching on Meetup and Facebook.
Re: Meetup.com alternatives
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you limit Meetabit to specific locations? Give us a free form search area and let me start a group anywhere :D
We soft launched it in a few cities only and it was easier to implement that way. I've added Tokyo for you now though. If there are any others you'd like me to add, post them in a comment here please.
Pls add Belgrade, Serbia
Re: Meetup.com alternatives
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's talk, i'm building one too. But with some different use-cases probably. Nico at Sapico dot me I have a marketing plan ready which is dublicateable for every city. Belgium and Netherlands is reserved for me ;)
I'm working on a similar problem, https://www.thawd.net Thawd focuses on getting groups of people out to events, not just one at a time. The idea is you tell the app what you want to do, and Thawd will find other people interested in the same thing and use personality matching to create groups of people who can hang out and have a good time together. Hoping to get submitted to app stores by EOW. (and yes, turns out g…
I built a site like that focussed around adhoc events for people of similar interests. But when I looked at the business model I saw a few difficulties:
* If it was effective users would probably stop using it and switch directly to something like whatsapp
* Judging by meetup, a few people actually create events and greater percentage attend. This seems common across many platforms - 5-10% of users are actually producers, but a much larger are "passive" consumers. My site focussed on adhoc events and I wasn't sure enough users would create them
* The real issue was needing to promote it hyperlocally, meaning each new location needed marketing. A site focussed around groups can build a history of events for each group which aids discoverability/SEO. But a site that's all about adhoc events doesn't have that benefit in the same way if members are more amorphous (my site was all about creating e.g. an event to play tennis that afternoon, so depended on locality).
I couldn't solve these issues and abandoned it. Good luck though.
Re: Meetup.com alternatives
#196There is some irony that everyone is rushing to build their own competitors because Meetup decided to charge $2. Let that sink in. You're effectively limiting yourself to a LTV of a customer of less than $2 per attendee of their events now. You'll end up in the same vicious cycle of needing to charge for something if you want your platform to survive.
Meetup was making money before they took VC funds and eventually sold to Wework. Their old model of charging $15+ to organizers seemed to work. I paid it for years because of the extra traffic and not wanting my events to be hijacked. They never let you own your own audience though.
Re: Meetup.com alternatives
#197If a meetup is not even worth $2 to attend, is it really worth an hour+ of your personal time?
How could someone pay even $2 for a meetup they've never attended? How would they know that someone would even show up? Especially if the organizer is now only paying $2/month to keep it going. And once someone has attended a meetup, they're exchanged contact info with the organizer and so there's reason they'd have to pay meetup to attend the event.
It doesn't work that way in practice. People use Meetup because it handles everything from reservations to ticketing to email announcements to messages boards and things in between. A mailing list is not a replacement.
Re: Meetup.com alternatives
#198People skipping the RSVP and just showing up "unofficially" is already a problem with Meetup. This is going to create the exact wrong incentive for that. Next up: movie theaters that charge $2 to anyone who doesn't talk during a movie, gyms that charge $2 if you put dumbbells back on the rack instead leaving them strewn around the floor, traffic cops giving tickets for properly using your turn signal, ...
The thing is, as a meetup organizer, I prefer someone who shows up but doesn't sign-up to someone who doesn't show up at all. At least for ongoing attendees and I host weekly and monthly "hobby" events when once someone shows up once, they don't have much incentive to sign-up for future meetup events and that's fine for everyone. I still don't mind paying for meetup because it's a way for new people to find the event…
Depending on the event, showing up without doing an RSVP can be worse than not coming. I think generally it depends on whether the RSVP is being relied on for something, for example an accurate headcount for a restaurant reservation.
For a regular meetup, it's not nearly as important to RSVP. Maybe even overly formal. I go to a weekly thing that's organized through Meetup, and I still RSVP every time, though, for a few reasons. One is it puts it on my calendar automatically. Two is it helps newbies feel comfortable that somebody is going and they won't be the only one there if they show up.
Re: Meetup.com alternatives
#199Somewhat 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…
>Has anything like this been attempted? Might it work? It has been tried, and early attempts failed. Jon Udell was one of the drivers behind the Elm City Project, which merged many RSS feeds of calendar information into a uniform resource. [0] Maybe its time has come again. [0] https://blog.jonudell.net/elmcity-project-faq/
Wow, this looks very thorough. A shame it didn't take off. Thank you for linking!
Re: Meetup.com alternatives
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm working on a similar problem, https://www.thawd.net Thawd focuses on getting groups of people out to events, not just one at a time. The idea is you tell the app what you want to do, and Thawd will find other people interested in the same thing and use personality matching to create groups of people who can hang out and have a good time together. Hoping to get submitted to app stores by EOW. (and yes, turns out g…
I built a site like that focussed around adhoc events for people of similar interests. But when I looked at the business model I saw a few difficulties: * If it was effective users would probably stop using it and switch directly to something like whatsapp * Judging by meetup, a few people actually create events and greater percentage attend. This seems common across many platforms - 5-10% of users are actually produ…
Send me a email, I'll share my idea with you in full.
I had the same issues and I think it's all ( yes, all ) solved ;) - our way of thinking is very similar with the related problems!
Ps. Please add your quote, so I know/remember what your problems were.