One of the biggest problems Meetup seems to have is that they have a 'one size fits all' model, which shows again here. And most of it is geared towards smaller groups.
I'm one of the organizers of a Meetup with 4300+ members. Many things that work with 10 members, don't work with 4000. And they don't seem to filter any of it: After a year or two they send us an email: "Congratulations, you'r 2 years old. Most groups then pass the 50 member mark!". We had about 2000 or so.
We have events every 2 months (with about 400 attendees). If we don't plan one for the next month, they email us "It's important to have regular meetings, plan one now!". We spend months planning our events, they cost a ton of money, and would like to decide for ourselves, instead of having automatic meetup suggestions.
Unfortunately I don't know any good competitors (meetup has a lot of features, especially around waiting lists/RSVP's). And the switchover would be a pain, as there is no way to export your members :(
Have you noticed much fallout from the recent redesign? It seems like there was a huge amount of outrage (mainly from organizers) [1], but I'm guessing that the lack of competitors means that meetup organizers are left with no viable alternatives.
Despite the title, this post is a great thing for meetup. It sounds like they took the classic advice - they launched early with a minimalist feature. Now this post tells them exactly how to improve it.
Of course, thousands(?) of potential advertisers are reading a "very unhappy" review, but I think that's overstated. The review is clearly positive on the idea, and on meetup in general. With a few tweaks, this sounds like a useful platform.
This is partly me screaming to hopefully get some attention from them. I'd love to give them feedback, but I couldn't get ahold of anyone. Their customer service is pretty much nonexistent as far as I can tell.
But yeah, I love the idea. I just hope they improve the execution.
Follow up: I just got a tweet from Meetup giving me a link to their contact-us form. They're listening, it just took me a while to get their attention.
I run Hackers and Founders, SV, and we're getting together with the organizers of the other HN/Startup meetups in the area (the New Tech's, Founder Dating, 106 miles, H&F SV, etc..), and one of the main topics of conversation is going to be how much meetup.com sucks for our groups.
H&F as well as SV NewTech are building their own software to try and fix these problems, but it's going to be a bit of a pain in the ass. Especially, since they don't let us have access to our email lists.
I'm one of the organizers of a Meetup with 4300+ members. Many things that work with 10 members, don't work with 4000. And they don't seem to filter any of it: After a year or two they send us an email: "Congratulations, you'r 2 years old. Most groups then pass the 50 member mark!". We had about 2000 or so.
We have events every 2 months (with about 400 attendees). If we don't plan one for the next month, they email us "It's important to have regular meetings, plan one now!". We spend months planning our events, they cost a ton of money, and would like to decide for ourselves, instead of having automatic meetup suggestions.
Unfortunately I don't know any good competitors (meetup has a lot of features, especially around waiting lists/RSVP's). And the switchover would be a pain, as there is no way to export your members :(
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