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Meetup, you've been bad, bad hosts

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Re: Meetup, you've been bad, bad hosts

#61

Post by natch »

Not to defend everything Meetup does, but conference registration is not really what the site is intended for.

Your usage pattern unfortunately just happened to look quite a bit like that something that they may think poisons the dynamic (recurring meetups of people with shared interests, not mainly driven by an organizer's self-interest) they are trying to create with the site.

I'm not saying your event was exactly pure self interest or bad in any way, it just isn't something that to them looks healthy for their site. And it doesn't fit the intent of meetup.

The fact that you had a poor description is the final problem here that leaves me feeling little sympathy. Every project, conference, etc. should have a clear description provided by the creator, at least if they want it to be well received. Maybe that's a lesson learned.

Re: Meetup, you've been bad, bad hosts

#62

Post by ilaksh »

Not very cool to just delete the data and blow up their event like that, but I think the issues are: it would be confusing if a lot of people started using meetup.com for individual events instead of groups, and probably screw up their scaling as well as their business model.

Re: Meetup, you've been bad, bad hosts

#63

Post by tgeek »

redcircle wrote: post #56
tgeek wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fmr employee as well. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess you've never been involved in running/managing a huge online community(ies) with in person social interactions as the primary goal. I might be wrong, so apologies ahead of time if so. Anywho - It actually isn't unprofessional when the goal is to protect the members from some organizer who might be malicious in nature. There are a lot of rules and guidanc…

When is the last time that you have read a TOS? You are shifting blame to the user, and it should not rest there. This is bad UI, and laziness. Meetup's TOS reads like a boiler-plate legal document; no one will read it.

Given that TOS's are often written by Lawyers it seems that their reading like a legal document has a high probability.

Re: Meetup, you've been bad, bad hosts

#64

Post by ajays »

PanMan wrote: post #57
SeanDav wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the sounds of it - just change your group description to something not descriptive enough and hey, presto, one perma-deleted group.

We still have >4K members, and still have to keep paying to keep them from getting spammed.

Spam them yourself, telling them to leave the group; tell them what will happen when you stop paying; and if someone still sticks around, they can face the consequences.

Re: Meetup, you've been bad, bad hosts

#65

Post by danshapiro »

MichaelGG wrote: post #38
Maxious wrote: post #2

See also "Meetup.com kills Vim London without warning" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4698541 particularly http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4698718 > This was a mistake on our part. We're reaching out and rectifying things now. Sorry guys. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, hello Eventbrite!

Not saying that Meetup is great, and Eventbrite might be vastly better. But a simple 2-strike rule is worthless. You need to look at the actual error rate (in this case, essentially a spam false positive) to determine if Meetup is truly a poor service. Otherwise, any smaller service will look better because they will have less complaints in absolute terms.

If Meetup's error rate was public information, your point would be sound. Since it is not, it is reasonable for the author to look at his experience only. Giving them two chances and experiencing a 100% failure rate seems like reasonable cause to abandon them.

Re: Meetup, you've been bad, bad hosts

#66

Post by pyre »

uladzislau wrote: post #41
PanMan wrote: post #5

Meetup is quite a bad service, but I don't know any better alternatives. I was one of the organizers of one of the larger meetups, with over 4K members. Some issues: * The tools are nowhere near adequate to handle this amount of people, and more geared towards small groups * However, there is NO way to switch: Your data is locked in with Meetup: There is no export or even access to the data of 'your' members. * You c…

The problem with Meetup is that there's nowhere to switch! Meetup is enjoying its monopoly position on the market. There's no alternative with the comparable features. I'm not even talking about userbase and discoverability. I'd be happy to use any alternatives and I hope someone from HN can come up with a better solution.

Drop me an email. If you'd like to discuss your ideas.

Re: Meetup, you've been bad, bad hosts

#68

Post by analog »

gmazzotti wrote: post #54
analog wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even think this is a false positive. They claim the conference is 'not for profit' which sounds all nice and fluffy, but it is sponsored by three orgs [1]. Even if they don't turn a profit on the first year they're still building the brand of the conference. The takeaway here is don't try to use Meetup to promote your conference. [1] http://summit2013.reversim.com/

'not for profit' don´t means don´t charing money, it means that money don´t goes to founders/owners maybe the sponsored money goes to pay the rent, beers and food so the event can be free, and any money goes to founders/owners

Not for profit means the organisation doesn't distribute funds to shareholders. The founders/owners are still free to pay themselves a wage.

That's what I mean about 'sounds nice and fluffy', actually it means very little in practice.

Re: Meetup, you've been bad, bad hosts

#70

Post by jasonlotito »

Maxious wrote: post #2

See also "Meetup.com kills Vim London without warning" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4698541 particularly http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4698718 > This was a mistake on our part. We're reaching out and rectifying things now. Sorry guys. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, hello Eventbrite!

The Vim Meetup was rightfully shutdown. It was the first meetup, and that meeting was intended to promote a product. In the end, the meeting and it's intended purpose was against the ToS. Moreso, it amounted to using Meetup as a way to spam people about said product.
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