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Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative

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

#141

Post by radius89 »

harry-wood wrote: post #98

I've ended up keeping a bit of list of events listing websites here: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mapping_Weekend_Howto#In... So I've added radius.to to that. This is for running community events for OpenStreetMap, and so one quirky requirement is that ideally we show OpenStreetMap rather google maps (perhaps as an option). We also like to see open source options, of which there are a couple listed on there (m…

> So I've added radius.to to that.

Hey, thanks! Much appreciated!

> Discoverability. meetup.com wins by having a list of events which is not just searchable and taggable etc, but also massive. So people just browse on there and find your event via their interests. That's a tough thing for any newcomer to compete with obviously.

Agreed. Initially, I planned to do similar to what RemoteOK did and aggregate listings from Meetup/Eventbrite/etc and just link back to the source directly, to gain traction. It seems like a legal grey area though so I'm hesitant to go that route, but it would solve that problem for me though.

I would love input on this from anyone with experience doing anything similar or who knows the legal ins and outs.

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

#142

Post by radius89 »

hugocast wrote: post #40

Looks great!Thanks for putting this together. For some reason, EDT is not available on the dropdown menu. But my browser displays EDT once I publish the event. So in the meetup event I can set it to be 7:00pm - 9:30pm EST, but it displays as 8pm - 10:30pm EDT. I switched it to be 6pm-8:30pm EST so it displays the time that I want, 7pm-9:30pm EDT. Any chance you could add EDT on the dropdown menu? Thank you. https://r…

Ahh, thanks for reporting this! Will fix it in the next release!

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

#143

Post by radius89 »

adamredwoods wrote: post #61

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.

> Great idea

Thanks!

> 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.

I have to agree! You should have seen previous versions...

I'll be adding some nice community-themed images/illustrations in the near future!

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

#147

Post by radius89 »

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'…

Hey, thanks for sharing your industry experience!

For 5. in particular, I have a general vision of what I want the platform to be but it's always changing with new ideas here and there, and also have to consider user feedback like you say. Keeping it simple, but useful is the goal instead of being a do-everything platform that you need a Phd to use (looking at you, Google Cloud Platform).

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

#148

Post by radius89 »

madacol wrote: post #139
radius89 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you plan to make money? Without a visible monetization model, my main concern switching to your platform would be the longevity of the platform and the risk of building up an audience there. Maybe this is something the community here can pitch in on because it makes me feel a little uneasy - but I've had a few suggestions of having a Patreon to help with early-stage development of the product, whilst publish…

Maybe offer an option of "Pay for entry" and charge a percentage. And implement in the app a way to verify the paying attendants, maybe by scanning a QR

Thanks! Yeah ticketing is a feature on my Trello todo list! For now, I'm just linking a "Tickets" button to whatever external provider the organiser wants to use.

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

#149

Post by radius89 »

gnicholas wrote: post #4

Plenty 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…

Thanks again for this comment.

Having thought about it a little, I'm going to try and address this by:-

- Adding a Pledge/Goals page with my plan for the platform

- Adding a Pricing page with Free and Pro (Coming soon) options

- Adding a "How are we funded" entry to the FAQ, explaining it's completely bootstrapped by me (whilst having a day job, hurrah), with a monetization plan of being funded by Pro plans, ticketing etc

- Publishing monthly financial data, open startup style (there won't be much in here currently aside from my Heroku bill) for additional transparency

I'm also considering the suggestion to add a "Support us" page for any groups/individuals who want to contribute to development efforts/running costs (though I'd be surprised if anyone would at this point.)

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

#150

Post by radius89 »

rixed wrote: post #18
gnicholas wrote: post #4

Plenty 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…

Such a simple thing as a meetup clone does not cost much to host, and is therefore immediately economically sustainable. The real concern is, as usual: is it easy to move from meetup to there, will my friends do it, etc, which depends on: - how simple it is to register an account - how certain are we this is not going to take the same path to profit than meetup An example I often consider is that of bewelcome.org, th…

> how simple it is to register an account

I think the sign-up flow is super minimal/easy at this point, but I'd love any suggestions you've got in mind.

Relevant features I'll be adding to make it easier:-

- Sign-in with Google option

- Potentially simplifying the RSVP flow with an email magic link - someone suggested that here - https://github.com/radiushq/feature-requests/issues/10

> how certain are we this is not going to take the same path to profit than meetup

I'm pretty adamant about not copying Meetup's model and keeping a Free option available for Groups. I think having a Pro plan with additional features, and potentially taking a % of ticketing fees once we've added ticketing will be sufficient. Have a few other ideas around event listing promotion and group memberships but these aren't fully fleshed out yet.

Open to suggestions on how best to convey that I won't be going the Meetup route to profit!

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