
WeWork acquires Meetup.com - shinamee
https://www.wired.com/story/why-wework-is-buying-meetup/?mbid=social_twitter_onsiteshare
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pw
This seems like yet another example of how tech’s ridiculous focus on ambition
and growth are going to kill something that’s just fine the way it is. I’m a
fan of Meetup.com, and it sounds like they are/were self-sufficient, but
suddenly the cofounder and CEO thinks they need to grow to a “billion
members”. Sad.

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1123581321
I'm also a fan of Meetup.com. Based on the article, I don't think Scott
necessarily wants to have a billion members. Instead, he doesn't want to go
out of business because Facebook takes over their industry. Meetup is fairly
independent and hasn't raised a lot of money. A competitor to Meetup that
doesn't charge for groups (initially) and has huge resources to develop
features and conduct marketing could kill them. I think Scott thought he
needed to prioritize surviving, providing jobs and continuing his political
activism. If that is the case, becoming more ambitious is a survival strategy.
It's disappointing but not the usual tech exit.

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subpixel
I've used Meetup a ton, as an organizer and as a user, so I'm a little
nostalgic about the good old days - but they've been over for some time.

I think EventBrite really put a dagger into Meetup five years ago or so, and
proved that what customers actually want is not another social network but
just a best-of-breed ticketing/booking/rsvp tool. I think Meetup tried for a
while to pretend this was not the case, despite the evidence of groups fleeing
their platform.

Interestingly, it's not just b/c organizers want to get paid. In my experience
the only way to get people to reliably show up for an event is to get them to
pay (even a nominal amount) and payments were just a bolted-on afterthought
for Meetup.

I have some doubts that Facebook will come to dominate this niche,
particularly when it comes to professional meetups/groups as many people keep
their FB network and their professional network quite separate.

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thisisit
Earlier discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15793754](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15793754)

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rwhitman
Coincidentally, Meetup's HQ is a very swanky bit of Manhattan real estate
they've been sitting on forever, right between Broadway and Lafayette in NoHo,
and would make for a nice WeWork space.

WeWork is 100% about real estate and that's all there is to it.

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thrillgore
Typically any website that gets bought immediately enters its tailspin, but
Meetup's rebranding (that gutted functionality) started that well in advance.

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olegp
We ([http://toughbyte.com](http://toughbyte.com)) organize a number of
technical meetups ourselves and have found Meetup.com lacking. To scratch our
own itch, we built Meetabit ([https://meetabit.com/](https://meetabit.com/))
which includes some additional features such as the ability to accept talk
proposals and sponsorship offers, have speaker profiles, archive of talks and
related materials, export data etc.

It does what we need and we haven't been actively developing or promoting it
recently. Nevertheless, it has grown organically to 4K+ users. Now that Meetup
has been acquired, I think there may be an opportunity to develop it further
and actually start monetizing.

Is there anyone here that would be interested in helping out with that? Which
direction should we take it in? Ideas and feedback, especially from fellow
meetup organizers or sponsors, would be greatly appreciated!

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SointuKoo
Good job, congrats! I'm interested to hel out for sure. Would need some time
to go thru the features though. First few quick comments:

I've loved using Eventbrite and it has some really nice additional features
that you could benchmark (event picture, paid ticket/ donation option for
scaling the business and getting some money in, showing remaining tickets for
public if wanted, automatic (scheduled) email announcements for community
subsribers (before event, launchign event, after event, etc.).

Also streamlining the sponsorship process would be helpful. Often times
sponsors don't remember to accept the offers etc. and we are forced to send
emails back and forth.

Connecting to SoMe accounts/ Slack and sharing event info from the platform.

Last but not least, making it possible for same sponsor to be added in
multiple cities.

We've realized that companies in Tampere are willing to pay a bit extra if we
just ask them for some organizing fee. To include that into the sponsorship
process would be really nice. Would require more specs for sure.

Thanks! Sointu

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Dowwie
Meetup has done a fine job. It has done a lot for the NYC metro area. It's
created a way to connect like-minded people. No one needs to "bowl alone" any
more.

I hope this acquisition respects the company's mission and helps to amplify
it. That would be nice.

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yusee
I've had negative experiences with Meetup.com. I've attended multiple meetups
around a technical subject with the hope of meeting peers who self-educate and
work on side projects. Instead, I have been subjected to sales pitches for
SaaS. I get it. Hosting a meetup is work, especially for introverted technical
types. People only do work when they expect an ROI.

Maybe it's better in Silicon Valley.

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d2s
Depends a lot on the type of event, besides of the location of an event. There
are a lot of community-focused events where people truly want to learn new
things together.

But on the other end of the spectrum, there are (way too many…) events where
the main focus is on the sales engineering. As a Wikipedia article describes:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_engineering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_engineering)

“… selling in these markets cannot depend on consumer-type sales methods
alone, and instead it relies heavily on technical information and problem-
solving to convince buyers that they should spend money on the seller's
products or service”

For many event organisers, tech events are a way to increase their own
visibility in the job market (or increase the amount of sales they do). Even
in the situations where there are a lot of good people attending the events,
too often the main focus is still on the presentations, instead of people
collaborating and creating things together.

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nodeflixnchill
Really liked the way that Meetup was venturing into branded meetups and pages.
So if I wanted to hunt down a specific community, I could do that fairly
easily.

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StavrosK
Does this mean that meetup.com will actually stop being terrible now? They've
been stagnating and coasting on their market share for years.

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STRiDEX
They launched a redesign recently.
[https://www.meetup.com/redesign](https://www.meetup.com/redesign)

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aaronchall
Which I tried out early on and came to regret as they were not updating
comments on meetup pages.

Not to be too critical though, they've created a lot of value for a lot of
people, and especially so for me when I moved to NYC. (No good meetups in my
podunk hometown of Pensacola...).

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JustAnotherPat
Is Meetup popular outside of NYC? Every time I've looked at non-tech meetups
outside of the area, the offerings seemed scarce.

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quantum_nerd
popular here in Seattle as well.

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myaso
Popular in Canada too.

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cylinder
Next they'll do an ICO just to their tenants ("members")! This will surely
increase bonds amongst them!

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aphextron
What an incredibly unreadable font

