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Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay

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Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay

#91

Post by chimeracoder »

clmay wrote: post #85

There is actually a way to delete Meetup groups, versus just leaving/stepping down from them. The Meetup docs are quite clear about the default behavior if you leave/step down: https://help.meetup.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002865332-Closi... The answer you needed was just a quick Google search away: https://www.google.com/search?q=delete+meetup+group , e.g. https://support.google.com/developergroups/answer/7378020?hl.…

> It's hard not to read OP as "we took an action without doing due diligence to fully understand the consequences of doing so." The point at which you make an assumption like this is the point at which you bear equal responsibility for unfavorable outcomes.

At least the last time I used the site, the UI is actually not very clear about this, to the point where it seems almost intentional. (After all, it's to Meetup's advantage to have the group continue and collect money from someone else for it, rather than have it deleted by default).

There are actually a lot of problems with how Meetup handles organizers stepping down and/or billing. I've lost track of the number of groups I've been in that experienced a "hostile" takeover because (for example) the primary organizer's credit card expired, which created an opening for any member to become the primary organizer just by providing their credit card, even though the other organizers were still present.

Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay

#92

Post by acomjean »

cableshaft wrote: post #32

Yep. I had a 1200 person geeky event meetup (board game events, geek movies, role playing, escape rooms, renaissance faires, conventions, zombie walks, a bunch of random geeky stuff) that I eventually wanted to stop paying $180/year for when the pandemic hit, since I wasn't willing to host any in-person events anymore. I stepped down and someone who wasn't even a member of the group swooped in to pay for it and has o…

I was part of an urban exploring meetup. (We went to an abandoned Christian theme park). But the meetup organizer stopped, and speed dating site took it over.

If I remember correctly the members were notified the organizer stepped down and asked someone to step up.

Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay

#93

Post by prodent »

alphakilo wrote: post #43

Meetup was a great platform but has totally lost it in the user experience. Out of all popular consumer apps, I would argue Meetup has the highest friction for both organizers and participants My problems meeting cyclists in Toronto led me to make a Toronto cycling discord of almost 1000 users I actually took the solution and have just launched an app for many more hobbies and anyplace! https://radar.ac We'lr be addi…

Won’t accept non-US phone numbers?

Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay

#95

Post by aitchnyu »

iepathos wrote: post #94

No action you can take against meetup at this point. Meetup owns the subscriber list and account and can do with it what they like.

I remember wildly popular social news site Digg went under and some guy bought the assets and made it a lame newsletter. I'm afraid of the next incarnation of Meetup.

Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay

#96

Post by kortilla »

adrianmonk wrote: post #17
marcus_holmes wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems harsh if OP is paying Meetup to create and support the meetup. I think there's an expectation that if you pay for the community, then you actually do own it, at least in some sense.

That's a valid point. It gets tricky because, from my experience, many/most Meetup organizers ask group members to donate to cover those fees. If they do this, then arguably the members are the owners rather than the organizer. But not all organizers do ask for donations. Some run meetups more like a business where they charge to attend events and may even make some profit. Some run meetups as a marketing tool for th…

> If they do this, then arguably the members are the owners rather than the organizer.

That’s not how donations work, that’s how investments work.

Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay

#98

Post by clmay »

dylan604 wrote: post #90
clmay wrote: post #85

There is actually a way to delete Meetup groups, versus just leaving/stepping down from them. The Meetup docs are quite clear about the default behavior if you leave/step down: https://help.meetup.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002865332-Closi... The answer you needed was just a quick Google search away: https://www.google.com/search?q=delete+meetup+group , e.g. https://support.google.com/developergroups/answer/7378020?hl.…

Yeah, it felt that way to me as well. Also, why not just pay, do the clean up you failed to do initially, and then go away like you planned? Failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on their part

You're reading my mind. Totally. I used to work in CX and "Failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on their part" was like a mantra, internally. We were still very compassionate to customers who found themselves in such situations, but as a support person it helps one keep oneself from getting sucked into the emergency mindset.

Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay

#99

Post by Lacerda69 »

isatty wrote: post #44
Gys wrote: post #23

It used to be possible to delete a group: https://support.google.com/developergroups/answer/7378020?hl... I did it myself a few times. However, maybe that is not possible anymore?

Is meetup help on support.google.com? I’m confused.

It's not. The link is referring to Google Developer Groups.

Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay

#100

Post by joe_91 »

Meetup really could be a 10x better platform. As someone who's run a group on it having to pay to then put in the work to run a group on top of that is just crazy.

They could have monetised the platform in so many other different ways which could have helped the community instead of just going for the easy pickings of charging the event organisers.

Why not charge a percentage on top of any payments take? Create/integrate with a room booking system in cities to help organisers book? (and take a fee on this)

The only thing Meetup does well is discovery - the domain name is amazing for the type of site it is and it is easy enough to search for groups in your city and find what you want. Everything else is pretty terrible.

I don't know how you could justify having more than 3 dev's working on this site the way it is at the moment. It just screams lazy...

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