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Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative

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

#101

Post by 2color »

stavros wrote: post #48
CognitiveLens wrote: post #41

I'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.

Have you looked at Luma?

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

#102

Post by zulban »

Neat. Here's a feature idea you may not have encountered before: the host sees an estimate on how many by people will show up. Initially this can just be a super trivial to implement 50% for free events and a label just above attendee count. Later it can be fancier with ML predictions based on event info and users. That ML could actually be very simple and still effective.

Even just the simple 50% notice could be really helpful to people hosting their first event for the first time. Or "7 sign ups, you can expect 0-3 attendees".

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

#103

Post by stavros »

2color wrote: post #101
stavros wrote: post #48

Earlier 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.

Have you looked at Luma?

I did, it can only email 500 people on the free tier (my meet-up has hundreds of people subscribed but only ~20 come to each event) and the paid tier costs $700/yr, which is way too much for a free meet-up.

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

#105

Post by com »

justincarter wrote: post #75

Hey I think this is a great idea! In fact I am working on putting together something similar! The apps in the meetup space are so bad there is a lot of potential here for new platforms. It is interesting that both you and the comments are focused on event discovery. I am looking at it from a different angle. I am looking for a platform that can keep a calendar of events and rsvps for already-established small nonprof…

Consider something like Mobilizon[0] - it's ActivityPub based, like Mastodon, but apart from the federation capability, might have the feature set you're looking for?

[0] https://joinmobilizon.org/en/

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

#106

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

This sounds great. I will mention to some folks I know, that might be able to use it.

Meetup.com was a good idea, but I found them to be useless.

Here's my experience:

I was interested in hosting local meetups for techhies. I wanted to do it around Swift, so I knew there wouldn't be many of us.

Meetup had two "paid" tiers. One, was up to about 20 people per meetup, and the other (more money), was for an unlimited number.

Since I knew the meetups would be small, I opted for the cheaper one. I didn't expect more than five or six people at any meetup.

Once I started posting meetups, though, I started getting a lot of bogus signups. They were clearly bogus, as many had nothing to do with tech, or were unreasonably far away (like New Jersey or Upstate). I suspect most, if not all, were fake profiles.

These signups filled the meetups, so I would get like, one real person showing up. All the rest were no-shows.

Coincidentally (I'm sure), I started getting a lot of upselling contacts, recommending that I get the unlimited plan, as my meetups were so popular.

After a couple of these, I figured out which way the wind was blowing (straight across the cow manure), and dumped Meetup.com.

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

#107

Post by nlnn »

I'm not sure there's much hope of this based on the product's name, but something which has always frustrated me about meetup is that distance to events is calculated by radius.

I live near London, so tons of events come up in meetup searches that are close as the crow flies, but can take over an hour to reach by public transport (or sometimes are in places inaccessible except by car).

I'd love something which took into account different transport modes/routes, so I could look for e.g. events within walking/cycling distance, events with under 30 minutes of train travel time, etc. (ideally taking into account public transport timetables, but that's maybe a bit too much to expect).

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

#108

Post by brainzap »

myaccountonhn wrote: post #66
stavros wrote: post #48

Earlier 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.

meetup didnt pause subscriptions during pandemic so we canceled all meetups and then never started them again.
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