meetup.com

Facebook User (Enthusiast)

The best use of this site is Research.

Comments: meetup is good plateform to meet technical person

Facebook User says: ...and quite literally! Meetup.com has provided an AWESOME tool for people that are ready to take (sometimes, the first) steps in organizing a live group of people that start off in the virtual world. Any key aspect of organizing is that you have help in doing so, which Meetup.com has done a WONDERFUL job of providing starter-type materials for those that never have organized other people for a reason/cause. Their technical and virtual/email support is very outgoing and helpful, although limited to the speed of their developers, which, by the way is accelerating at incredible speeds. For example, Meetup.com's recent interface with Facebook was a brilliant move: on top of Meetup.com being another networking website, it has partnered with (one of) the largest social networking organizations on the web - I've had WAY more responses to my Meetup.com posts on Facebook since I've been interfacing a credible and URL-referenced way to post. No doubt: (currently $144/yr,) Meetup.com has a value that continues to grow for people to become active - IN REAL LIFE - and get out from behind their computer screens.

Facebook User says: Meetup is not perfect but what is? It provides the best web interface and tools to create and market a local group. In 8 months I took a group with about 10 members and created a group of over 300 members. No other tool on the internet, for so little money ($72 for 6 months), can provide the same results in so little time. Meetup has some flaws and they are not to be overlooked. But with a limited staff, they have created an amazing resource for local groups and their leaders. Every group has its own unique set of needs and tweaks that their respective leader would like. However, even an organization with almost unlimited resources (Google) can't be all things to all people and development takes time. It is unrealistic to expect a small startup like Meetup to be all things to all people. My group finds a few things, such as the photo galleries, less than satisfactory. Until such time as Meetup makes the galleries better suited for photography related groups, we'll be content to use the resources of web sites with better accommodations for photographers. The bottom line is the world would be a much poorer place without Meetup and the efforts of its staff.

Facebook User says: For community building and organizing, this site cannot be beat by anything out there (yet). The combination of privacy, email, photos, lists, the high view rankings are great, G00gle crawls with great results and spam protection is good. as a successful Meetup organizer, I find the tools Meetup provides to be adequate; superior in some applications, but very slow to respond to customer requests for upgrades in features organizers need and want (and have been requesting for YEARS.) The cost of Meetup is paid by the Organizer, with options up to the Org on how/if to recoup the fees charged. G00gle ads subsidize fees. There is a huge, active demographic on Meetup but it is limited by topic interest. Most of the advertising is confined to NYC with other parts of the world finding Meetup accidentally. There is room for huge improvement and growth and I hope Meetup meet up with it's potential.

I just browsed through the groups in the Los Angeles area and after looking at probably 2 or 3 hundred groups with a sigficant number of members, I can tell you that 8 out of 10 groups are devoted to liberal/anti-bush activism, 1 or 2 out of 10 are devoted to vampires/witches/goths, and maybe 0 or 1 out of 10 to random things like dashboard confessional fans. I'm not conservative or a fan of George Bush, but I was hoping for a lot more diversity of interests on this site. If you're a hardcore liberal or a vampire, then this site is for you. If not, look elsewhere.

I recently started an real estate investing group in my city and was amazed at how fast the members responded. Most of the members that joined the group had previously asked to be notified if a group matching their criteria was being started. Once I paid the fee to create the group, the members started signing up faster than I expected. Within 30 days, there were 50 members wanting to participate in our first event and Meetup.com was able to recommend a venue based on the reviews of other Meetup Organizers. Since our first event, my phone has been ringing off the hook with new business contacts. The marketing and event planning tips offered through their website are priceless. Where else can you pay less than $100 and have over 50 people knocking at your door to know you? As the organizer of the Atlanta Real Estate Investing Meetup Group, I am constantly on the lookout for ways to bring focus to our group. And Meetup.com has been very supportive in growing our group through the website that they provided (http://realestate.meetup.com/230). They are unlike the typical group sites that focus on virtual meetings (chatrooms, instant messaging, etc). The events that we organize are in-person so you're meeting people face-to-face. And that is what networking is all about!

I was unimpressed with the site. Meetup has no real advantages over other sites which are used to create and manage groups. The biggest drawback is (excluding the fact that many tools are second-rate and pathetic) that Meetup is a "pay to play" site, and other group sites are free and offer more advanced tools.

This is another of a bevy of social networking websites. But this seems more grounded in emphasising local events. So that you can find others with a common interest, in your area. Their website plays this up, more than any gee whiz professional networking. Here, the examples are more prosaic and less technology oriented. This website may also appeal to those involved in activism, as a nice scheduling framework. Though no doubt the website has more ambitious aims than that. Meetup has an impressive board of directors. Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, is on it. Along with noted technology pundit, Esther Dyson. Still can't figure out if their business model makes sense.