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Meetup.com alternatives

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Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#21

Post by eloisant »

nickjj wrote: post #14

This is a good reminder of why I stopped going to most local tech meetups ran by meetup.com. Not because of the upcoming $2 fee, but because most of the time it's a 2 hour tech meetup where you spend 15 minutes mingling at the start, then 1 hour and 30 minutes listening to advertisements disguised as talks where you sit down and remain silent and then another 15 minutes mingling at the end. It feels so corporate and…

meetup.com is just a tool, the content of the meetup is what the organizers do of it.

Most tech meetups in my area are just friendly get-together.

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#22

Post by djsumdog »

saboot wrote: post #2

They are what?? $2 to just to say I'm attending an event? What a blatant shakedown. I should also become a corporate executive and steal a bunch of money if this is the level of thought the job requires.

I rarely even say I'm going unless there are a limited number of slots. I just show up. Hopefully they won't hide the location or ical download unless you pay the $2. That would be super shitty. This is a pretty big shakedown, and I don't see it ending well for Meetup.

Sadly I agree with others that people will just moved to Facebook events :(

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#23

Post by opensports »

If you're a recreational sports Meetup group you could try us at OpenSports (www.opensports.net). We only charge for paid events and don't have monthly fees. We've moved over hundreds of sports Meetup groups such as https://opensports.net/@cfrs, https://opensports.net/@sonsofpitchesfc, https://opensports.net/@philadelphiavolleyball/. We offer the full gamut of Meetup features along with many others such as support for waivers, discounts, waitlists for paid events, etc. Transaction fees of $5% + $0.30 including Stripe credit card fees.

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#24

Post by emredurukn »

degenerate wrote: post #3

The list: https://emamo.com https://kommunity.com https://joinmobilizon.org/en https://cete.io (not yet launched?) https://eventy.io (not yet launched) And the not-yet-build one by FreeCodeCamp: https://twitter.com/ossia/status/1183845054449930241 I've never heard of any of them. Opinions?

https://kommunity.com +1

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#25

Post by ghaff »

emptybits wrote: post #10

I fear this $2/attendee grab by Meetup will drive more people to Facebook for finding and planning and advertising events. Sadface. The understandable reason: Facebook is "free" and most of these better alternatives will be fragmented and mainstream unknown for a long time. Maybe one overarching event-search service could help the fragmentation problem, if it doesn't already exist.

A per-person charge makes free/volunteer-organized events largely a non-starter. Any charge is a huge friction for people signing up for something. And unless it's a corporate sponsored event (and often even then), the $5 or so per person who actually ends up attending is significant.

Probably people/companies will just depend on word of mouth and other channels to promote events and not depend on discovery through a specific service.

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#26

Post by SolaceQuantum »

nickjj wrote: post #14

This is a good reminder of why I stopped going to most local tech meetups ran by meetup.com. Not because of the upcoming $2 fee, but because most of the time it's a 2 hour tech meetup where you spend 15 minutes mingling at the start, then 1 hour and 30 minutes listening to advertisements disguised as talks where you sit down and remain silent and then another 15 minutes mingling at the end. It feels so corporate and…

I actually find this isn’t my experience in NYC, admittedly I actively avoid such talks and go straight to collective hack nights or special interests (Eg. Postgres devs or similar niches).

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#27

Post by leggomylibro »

peterwwillis wrote: post #8

I was thinking of an alternative that would allow anyone to publish a meeting with a standard data format (similar to recipes) and get picked up by a massive meeting indexer. But then I realized that event coordinators want a lot of control over RSVPs, sending messages to attendees, and the ability to collect money ahead of time to pre-pay for event supplies, etc. It really is annoying that you need a platform to han…

Is there a standard data format for recipes? That sounds interesting.

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#28

Post by starpilot »

> The pricing change is currently only a limited test for select groups in a small number of locations. We will not be making any significant pricing changes in the near term. We are committed to providing advance notice before any changes go into effect.

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#29

Post by iamspoilt »

jborichevskiy wrote: post #11

Somewhat related note: as someone living in a major city I find it increasingly hard to discover relevant events happening soon/around me. Events I'm looking for span a range of interests, artists, bands, topics, hobbies, and causes - hence no one central location has a list of everything relevant to me. So I'm forced to regularly dig through Meetup, Eventbrite, Facebook, Google Events Search, individual sites, indiv…

That’s the first thing I thought after going through the linked article. We strongly need some aggregating tool for all events happening around a particular location.

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#30

Post by NikolaeVarius »

nickjj wrote: post #14

This is a good reminder of why I stopped going to most local tech meetups ran by meetup.com. Not because of the upcoming $2 fee, but because most of the time it's a 2 hour tech meetup where you spend 15 minutes mingling at the start, then 1 hour and 30 minutes listening to advertisements disguised as talks where you sit down and remain silent and then another 15 minutes mingling at the end. It feels so corporate and…

2600 still meets, you should hit up your local one.
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