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Meetup.com kills Vim London without warning

vimcasts.org

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Re: Meetup.com kills Vim London without warning

#11

Post by davidw »

xoail wrote: post #3

I hate it when companies make these decisions without warning the customers. Even if they are doing something against their terms.

Well, it's certainly very annoying, but think of several circumstances:

* Hacked account. I actually, upon reflection, did not mind that Google shut everything down of mine when they labeled a blog as spam. What if it were spam written by someone who had hacked into my account? The key thing here is to make it very easy to prove you're you and get back in. And apologize profusely, and explain what it happened. I got everything back but the blog as soon as I confirmed an SMS'ed code. They did take more than a week to get the blog back on line, which was annoying, even if it was nothing important.

* Actual spammers would love to be able to test the boundaries and get quick feedback about what's going to work and what's not going to fly. They'll use any feedback you give them to improve their spamming techniques.

So... it's not easy. I think what pisses me off the most is that there's no appeal, no way to say "woah, I didn't do anything!"

Re: Meetup.com kills Vim London without warning

#13

Post by oinksoft »

jonathanjaeger wrote: post #9
oinksoft wrote: post #5

There's a ripe market opportunity for a free or significantly cheaper alternative to Meetup, unless I'm unaware of a competitive one that already exists. $12/month is absurd for what amounts to a BB service with a handful of social networking features.

Actually it seems like a very reasonable price. The community (and the name) is a valuable asset. People who join Meetup discover new meetups -- it's a community with network effects. It's not that easy to reach that kind of scale. $12/month is perfectly reasonable, not because of the software, but because of the value baked into it.

It is mostly the name that is the valuable asset. People right now think to begin their search on Meetup. Their brand is extremely valuable, but I think somebody can beat them on price and by making it easier (very inexpensive or free) to begin a new group.

Re: Meetup.com kills Vim London without warning

#14

Post by donretag »

jonathanjaeger wrote: post #9
oinksoft wrote: post #5

There's a ripe market opportunity for a free or significantly cheaper alternative to Meetup, unless I'm unaware of a competitive one that already exists. $12/month is absurd for what amounts to a BB service with a handful of social networking features.

Actually it seems like a very reasonable price. The community (and the name) is a valuable asset. People who join Meetup discover new meetups -- it's a community with network effects. It's not that easy to reach that kind of scale. $12/month is perfectly reasonable, not because of the software, but because of the value baked into it.

LinkedIn can very easily take control of professional meetups, but no one has the brains to do it. LinkedIn has group, has events, but both features are terrible, lack good APIs and are not integrated.

I would rather join a technical group on LinkedIn with events instead of using Meetup. The community is already there and almost all of us have LinkedIn accounts.

LinkedIn: please fix groups, please fix events.

EDIT: Forgot about Google Plus and events. Another potential alternative to Meetup.

Re: Meetup.com kills Vim London without warning

#15

Post by untog »

gm wrote: post #7
sighup wrote: post #6

This was a mistake on our part. We're reaching out and rectifying things now. Sorry guys.

The real bug here is to have unilateral action. It assumes you guys are infallible, which no human is.

Huh? I don't even know what that means. Of course Meetup needs to have unilateral action- they need to shut down spammers, etc.

Re: Meetup.com kills Vim London without warning

#17

Post by DavidWoof »

Organizing a meetup and then using the first meeting to promote your own commercial product is bound to raise some flags at meetup.org. And I'm really glad it does, otherwise we'd be inundated with meetup spam as every product launch creates a group on meetup.org for the free publicity.

I really like Drew Neil's work on vimcasts, but he goofed here and didn't really think it through. I suspect that if he resubmits the group without the personal promotion everything will go fine. As far as I can tell, they didn't kick a pre-existing group, but rather turned down the request for a new group.

Re: Meetup.com kills Vim London without warning

#18

Post by jasonlotito »

xoail wrote: post #3

I hate it when companies make these decisions without warning the customers. Even if they are doing something against their terms.

From what I gather, this was the first meetup being organized, and the first meeting was in part to promote a product. This should raise red flags. Otherwise, it becomes a wonderfully cheap spam vector. (Meetup sends noticed to users when local grous are added that users say they are interested in).

As a user of Meetup.org, I'm find with this level of oversight. As long as he can go about getting the meeting reestablished, I see no harm being done, and everything working appropriately.

Re: Meetup.com kills Vim London without warning

#20

Post by gojomo »

untog wrote: post #15
gm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real bug here is to have unilateral action. It assumes you guys are infallible, which no human is.

Huh? I don't even know what that means. Of course Meetup needs to have unilateral action- they need to shut down spammers, etc.

They could make a warning/inquiry first, allowing a dialogue to explain a murky case before damage is done by a 'unilateral' enforcement action. (Pretty sure that's what grandparent post meant.)
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