Great idea, 100% agree this space is ripe for innovation. But that website is cold and stark, the opposite of what a human-interaction should be. Find some (quality) stock photos of actual people to add to the landing page.
Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative
61–70 of 155 posts
Re: Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative
#62I've worked in this product area before, and the big threats that we always had to watch out for were 1. Spam - once the app is large enough, you will be inundated with 'groups' that are just marketing pitches for companies and products. If you don't have a system for approving groups or figuring out how to promote high-quality over low-quality groups, you're going to struggle. Also, the whole idea of 'high-quality'…
I came here to make this comment, though without having worked in the product area. I've seen all of these issues.
1. Spam - there's a question of definition. I've seen lots of bars post their happy hour etc. Is that an event or just an ad for the bar? Lots of meet ups that are really just an hour long pitch for some service/software/consulting. I've seen a groups post the same event under different names 10-15 times. I've also seen groups somehow claim 300 people are coming to their event even though the venue only holds 80 people. I don't know what kind of backdoor they found since this "300+ people" was the number reported by the service itself, not just something in the description.
5. I don't know what "too many features" is but I did enjoy posting images to meet ups. Sure that can be done via some other service but that requires all the people at the event to coordinate separately from the fact that they already signed up for the event. OTOH I'm sure hosting images brings up all kinds of problems. Similarly, the "chat" feature has been invaluable for coordination. Show up to a picnic, need to find out where they ended up, check the chat on the event page.
> Then there's the fact that their search experience is just terrible.
Agreed - but you don't have search yet or if you do it wasn't clear. I assume that's on your TODO list.
That brings up issue 2, user made content. Maybe AI can categorize events from descriptions but on many sites with user content, people will tag themselves with whatever they think will get search results, even if their event is entirely unrelated. Which then ruins the results and makes the experience bad.
In any case, I which you luck. I'd love for there to be better solutions in this area.
Re: Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative
#63Good luck trying to disrupt meetup.com. I really want this to happen, but they have market momentum. meetup.com is the most bloated app I've ever seen.
Re: Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative
#64Great choice of name, fitting for a meetup platform! It'd be nice knowing right of the bat if the email I sign up with ( https://www.radius.to/users/sign_up ) will be shared with other users or not. Best of luck, just like u/skrebbel mentioned below I do wish this takes off.
> It'd be nice knowing right of the bat if the email I sign up with (https://www.radius.to/users/sign_up) will be shared with other users or not.
Great suggestion - I'll add that to the sign-up form!
> Best of luck, just like u/skrebbel mentioned below I do wish this takes off.
Thanks!
Re: Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative
#65Please open-source it if the project dies. Thanks!
I'd say that the biggest threat is not getting enough traction/funding. Marketing could help to increase the user base.
Re: Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative
#66I've worked in this product area before, and the big threats that we always had to watch out for were 1. Spam - once the app is large enough, you will be inundated with 'groups' that are just marketing pitches for companies and products. If you don't have a system for approving groups or figuring out how to promote high-quality over low-quality groups, you're going to struggle. Also, the whole idea of 'high-quality'…
I run a meet-up group, I hate meetup.com but I pay for it because Facebook groups isn't as good, and meetup.com doesn't even work properly. It's such a terribly low bar.
Meetup used to be amazing in certain cities and as someone who travels a ton it used to be my goto way to meet people.
Something happened after the pandemic though and it just turned completely garbage. All the events on there are virtual, spammy, corporate (like node js meetup stuff). Not to mention it doesn’t work half the time.
I would absolutely love an alternative.
Re: Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative
#67I've worked in this product area before, and the big threats that we always had to watch out for were 1. Spam - once the app is large enough, you will be inundated with 'groups' that are just marketing pitches for companies and products. If you don't have a system for approving groups or figuring out how to promote high-quality over low-quality groups, you're going to struggle. Also, the whole idea of 'high-quality'…
I run a meet-up group, I hate meetup.com but I pay for it because Facebook groups isn't as good, and meetup.com doesn't even work properly. It's such a terribly low bar.
I attend 1-3 meetups a month, the recent changes made it unusable for me. They want $10 a month just to check who will be attending. I don't say they should provide everything for free, but that pricing is ridiculous.
Re: Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative
#68Plenty of folks are sick of Meetup, so there should be a fertile audience. One question I would have before migrating an existing group is what your plans are for making this sustainable. People don't want to jump to a new platform that is great, only to find it migrate in the direction of the platform they've just left. On the other hand, people don't want to migrate to a platform that is going to go under because i…
> I think of Garry Tan's Posthaven as a good model. [1]
This is an awesome suggestion - definitely stealing that idea. Thanks!
Re: Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I run a meet-up group, I hate meetup.com but I pay for it because Facebook groups isn't as good, and meetup.com doesn't even work properly. It's such a terribly low bar.
Meetup used to be amazing in certain cities and as someone who travels a ton it used to be my goto way to meet people. Something happened after the pandemic though and it just turned completely garbage. All the events on there are virtual, spammy, corporate (like node js meetup stuff). Not to mention it doesn’t work half the time. I would absolutely love an alternative.
That’d not a meetup.com problem but a „in person meetup“ in general issue.
All the groups I attended and the one I organized basically never restarted after the pandemic.
Re: Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative
#70I actively run both a professional and personal on Meetup for the past 1.5 years. I love seeing new options show up in the space, because I do believe the tools are ripe for disruption right now and the sites where people post their events are very fragmented. Kudos to you for taking a stab at it. There's two things I'd love to know how you're thinking about: 1. Right now, the benefit of Meetup is natural discoverabi…
> It's my understanding that despite the high cost to run Meetups, the company itself has never been in a good financial position. They've been bought and sold multiple times. Former Meetup employee here. A company being bought and sold multiple times is not a sign of being in a poor financial position. 2017: Meetup was first bought by WeWork for $156M. 2020: Meetup was then sold for a fire sale price to AlleyCorp as…
Thanks for the extra context! I was operating off of (faulty) memory with that statement.
You're 100% right that it's not necessarily a sign of being in a poor financial position and that's my bad for assuming as much.
From an outsider's perspective, it makes it seem as if the local events space is not necessarily a lucrative business to be in. If it was, it would likely stand on it's own independently. Instead, we see more tools integrate events as a feature of an existing community platform. I think that's where there's an opportunity, especially for smaller shops or solopreneurs.