Meetup.com User Lifecycle • Hacker News Board

Re: Meetup.com User Lifecycle

#11

Post by joe_the_user » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 12:54 AM UTC

I like Meetup a lot and I've had a couple active Meetups for a couple years.

The thing I don't like is that the feature they've been seem to be copied from Facebook rather than being specific to Meetup - especially, it would be nice to have to calendar and event oriented and less chat-oriented (especially, it's annoying getting extra-info about event I already decided not to go to).

But the valued offered by Meetup is in many ways better than the Facebook equation; Meet people you don't already know face-to-face rather than chatting online with people you've known forever anyway.

Re: Meetup.com User Lifecycle

#12

Post by joe6pack » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 1:45 AM UTC

I run a large meetup (SVNewTech), and agree with a lot of the points this article makes. I've tried to apply the email marketing concepts to my startups, and have seen others do so, as well (Convore & Quora come to mind).

One interesting aspect of Meetup's email strategy that the author doesn't mention (because it's only tangentially related): Meetup.com doesn't give organizers access to their community members' email addresses. The only way for the organizer to contact the community is through Meetup - this creates lock-in to the service (and much frustration). It's probably a wise business policy for Meetup, but becomes a point of contention for the organizers of larger groups.

On a related note, Meetup seems to succeed in spite of itself. They recent released sweeping changes to the design & functionality of the site without notifying organizers, resulting it this epic thread of discontent: http://www.meetup.com/boards/thread/10376961/0/

I think there's a great opportunity to create a service like Meetup that addresses some of these downfalls. If anyone is interested in building something like that, let me know: joe (AT) svnewtech [DOT] com

Re: Meetup.com User Lifecycle

#13

Post by tewolde » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 2:54 AM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #11

I like Meetup a lot and I've had a couple active Meetups for a couple years. The thing I don't like is that the feature they've been seem to be copied from Facebook rather than being specific to Meetup - especially, it would be nice to have to calendar and event oriented and less chat-oriented (especially, it's annoying getting extra-info about event I already decided not to go to). But the valued offered by Meetup i…

I agree, and since meetup.com is a lot more locally relevant it has more "opportunities" to connect with their users in a way that would not be regarded as spammy.

Though it is harder to scale, I think there is a lot of potential in this go local strategy.