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Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative

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Re: Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative

#81

Post by syedkarim »

radius89 wrote: post #60
rickcarlino wrote: post #28

I run a meet up group of about 1000 members for a makerspace in the Chicago suburbs. I’m glad to see alternatives coming about, but I’m also somewhat skeptical this can actually solve our dissatisfaction with Meetup. As an event organizer, I don’t really need that many fancy features. I need a product that is moderately priced and will actually get people to walk in the door when I schedule an event. Focus on buildin…

Thanks for the feedback and the kind offer, Rick - I'll definitely take you up on that and reach out!

I scheduled a call with rickcarlino awhile back--I didn't know him before doing so. He is very sharp and very genuine. You should definitely take him up on his offer.

Re: Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative

#83

Post by nprateem »

radius89 wrote: post #27
jacobgkau wrote: post #16

I've been using Meetup heavily for years, and I've met most of my friends in my current city at Meetups. I also used to host one in my previous city. However, the Meetup website and app are garbage (especially with things being slow or straight-up failing to load) and have only been getting worse (other than the recently-added Connections feature, which is nice in theory but basically nobody uses). So naturally, a co…

> While true, a side effect of this is that groups that aren't active anymore eventually get deisted, because nobody wants to pay Meetup's prices to keep a dead group online. Once you get discovery up and running, I'd be curious to see how cluttered the website gets with inactive groups, especially over time. Yeah, that would be interesting to see! If a free option was always available then I'd assume the amount of g…

I saw a YT video once where the founder said they started charging mainly to cut spam.

Re: Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative

#84

Post by nprateem »

I worked on a similar app. Did several iterations before binning it.

If I were to do it again I'd focus solely on business model & value proposition canvases and research. You need to find a USP that both sides of your market really value (ideally leading to viral growth) and that meetup can't replicate.

This is absolutely not a technical problem despite how shit meetup is.

There are several informative videos on YT from the founder from several years ago. They probably tried most of what you're thinking of doing. You can learn from them.

Good luck!

PS I have actually found a new take that I think solves a lot of the issues I had (revenue, cheap scalable marketing, growth). I'm keeping it close to my chest, but at some point I may give it a go. There are novel approaches out there. Be creative and original.

Re: Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative

#85

Post by shiroiushi »

nprateem wrote: post #83
radius89 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While true, a side effect of this is that groups that aren't active anymore eventually get deisted, because nobody wants to pay Meetup's prices to keep a dead group online. Once you get discovery up and running, I'd be curious to see how cluttered the website gets with inactive groups, especially over time. Yeah, that would be interesting to see! If a free option was always available then I'd assume the amount of g…

I saw a YT video once where the founder said they started charging mainly to cut spam.

Perhaps, but it seems they just succeeded into turning it mainly into a platform for profiteers and scammers to advertise their bars' happy hours, their dating events, their MLM seminars, etc.

Re: Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative

#87

Post by keiferski »

I have thought a lot about the events space (especially considering recent anti-social media backlash) and my conclusion is that something like this will only work if the company itself has a mechanism for organizing the events. If you are relying on users/third-party people to handle events, it'll eventually devolve into what Facebook Events/Meetup/etc. is today.

Re: Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative

#88

Post by akvadrako »

stavros wrote: post #59
DANmode wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your top Meetup.com pain-points?

I always set up the same event, at the same place, etc, yet it's hard to just say "use all the values from the previous one". It doesn't have many ways to communicate with members, so I've set up a Discord server instead, which is fine. The UI is a bit confusing if you need to do anything other than set up an event. Most crucially of all, members complain that emails don't reach them, which is terrible, because then…

You can copy events and set up repeating events. I do this all the time.

Re: Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative

#89

Post by stavros »

akvadrako wrote: post #88
stavros wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always set up the same event, at the same place, etc, yet it's hard to just say "use all the values from the previous one". It doesn't have many ways to communicate with members, so I've set up a Discord server instead, which is fine. The UI is a bit confusing if you need to do anything other than set up an event. Most crucially of all, members complain that emails don't reach them, which is terrible, because then…

You can copy events and set up repeating events. I do this all the time.

Maybe they added this recently, my meet-up has been on hiatus and just started up again. This definitely wasn't a thing up until a year or so ago, though.

Re: Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative

#90

Post by akvadrako »

stavros wrote: post #89
akvadrako wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can copy events and set up repeating events. I do this all the time.

Maybe they added this recently, my meet-up has been on hiatus and just started up again. This definitely wasn't a thing up until a year or so ago, though.

I've been running meetups for 15 years and it's been a feature as long as I can remember.
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