9 ms·

Meetup has been acquired by Bending Spoons

135 points by devops000 3y ago

nashashmi 3y ago
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22728947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22728947 (Meetup spins off from WeWork after being bought by them for $200 million.)
sschueller 3y ago
Let's hope it's run better than when it was owned by WeWork. WeWork paid $156 million, I wonder what Bending Spoons paid.
mikequinlan 3y ago
Bending Spoons also owns Evernote, which has been thoroughly enshitified. This doesn't sound good for Meetup.
- bdcravens 3y ago
  Reality hasn't been good to Meetup. At this point, it's just a matter of squeezing the juice out of a dying tree.
  - F-W-M 3y ago
    What did reality do to meetup?
    - bdcravens 3y ago
      People stopped going to in-person events.
      - F-W-M 3y ago
        I visited more events post-covid than pre-covid.
        bdcravens 3y ago
        There's a group of people who were eager for events once the pandemic "ended", but that group is much smaller than those who used to regularly go to events and stopped. Companies like Meetup need scale to be successful.
    - rolfvandekrol 3y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic
    - pmontra 3y ago
      As a data point, I used to organize a Meetup in the very city Bending Spoons is based at. The last meetup was right before the covid pandemic hit. We never had a new one. We keep using our Telegram channel to exchange news and experiences.
      - em-bee 3y ago
        many places are bouncing back. give it some time. and do promote the idea. likely the problem is that the pre-covid organizers have moved on, so it takes a new generation of volunteers to organize something.
- pantulis 3y ago
  Product-wise I'd argue that Evernote was in the middle of a deshitification but was financially running on fumes, and the move to Electron was the right one although the release was rushed and it alienated the user base. I find it interesting that BS is a native mobile shop and now they have to manage some frontend built on top of Electron. Growth-wise is another thing, I think they have decided to get rid of the free users and in my opinion they have skimmed too much from the free tier which is basically a "try before you buy" now.
- notyourwork 3y ago
  Maybe I’m an outlier but I continue to use Evernote. It works well as of last 6 months (have had an account for over a decade) and find it just works well enough to not abandon.
  - randerson 3y ago
    Be aware: Your next renewal will be double the price it was last year.
- agos 3y ago
  they also own Filmic, which has also been thorooughly enshittified. Not holding my breath for Meetup
GavinAnderegg 3y ago
Meetup has historically been a great resource for technology events in my area… but I've found they've become quite "needy" lately. They tried to gamify joining/attending meetups, which leads to a lot of email noise. Maybe some people want to be in 100 meetup groups and attend a meetup every day of the week? But I doubt it's most users. They've also started showing "special offers". You often need to click through them to actually do what you came to the site to do. I understand that Meetup was likely really hurt by the pandemic, but I hope this new leadership can find a way to make interacting with service fun again. It currently feels rather skeezy. EDIT: As noted below, Bending Spoons also bought Evernote and that hasn't gone well. So, this might be a great space if someone is looking to compete!
- bdcravens 3y ago
  Unfortunately, the heyday of technology events is in the past. Pretty much every business goes through a cycle of desperately clawing for revenue when the core business model falters.
  - danieldisu 3y ago
    Yep, those tasty formation and travel budgets are also being squeezed in the quest for profits, reducing the market size for these tech events...
  - phkahler 3y ago
    I've been to one or two tech related meetups and they sucked. I've been to many many other meetups and had a great time. Still going every week or two.
- vpontis 3y ago
  Context / Plug: I'm a founder of a Meetup competitor / successor called lu.ma I think Meetup got in a hard position because they didn't have very many paid events and their communities tended to churn off of Meetup. It's hard to make money as a community organizing tool so they tried a bunch of different ways of making money, including charging guests + showing irrelevant ads which both don't work. Also, Meetup was in a very weird spot before the pandemic. They were bought by WeWork and then sold off in the WeWork crunch. I doubt any of the original team is still there. Anyway, lu.ma is free to use for free events so if there's anything I can reach out with, feel free to ping me at victor@lu.ma
lolinder 3y ago
Meetup was vibrant in my area before the pandemic, but whenever I've checked in afterwards it's a ghost town of groups that are still there but haven't had a meeting in years. To some extent I think the pandemic has permanently altered the landscape of extracurriculars like those that Meetup was supporting, and I'm unsurprised that they're struggling to adapt.
- bdcravens 3y ago
  I've run a couple of technology user groups, and even before the pandemic, demand was wavering. The advantages of in-person events (mostly for job seekers and recruiters) just don't outweigh the inconvenience for many.
- stillbourne 3y ago
  Ditto, all the interesting things are gone and the only active groups are "Interesting Singles in their 20s and 30s" No more PUGs for D&D and board games. No tech meetups either.
  - smelendez 3y ago
    I think a lot of non-tech events like D&D/running/board games/birdwatching/crafts/etc. now have left Meetup or never were there. I see a lot of these types of events promoted on Instagram and sometimes Facebook, because there's a bigger audience there. There are still some on my local Meetup, though. I also sometimes see Zoom events, especially tech and business-oriented ones, where I frankly wonder if the live videoconferencing format is ideal or just an imitation of what people used to do in person. It's possible that podcasts and YouTube have eaten a lot of this market if people aren't going to get together in person.
    - stillbourne 3y ago
      > I think a lot of non-tech events like D&D/running/board games/birdwatching/crafts/etc. now have left Meetup or never were there. I see a lot of these types of events promoted on Instagram and sometimes Facebook, because there's a bigger audience there. There are still some on my local Meetup, though. Perhaps that's why I no longer see them, I've deleted most of my social media so I don't have access to FB or IG for events.
pantulis 3y ago
It seems Bending Spoons is on a shopping spree, it would be interesting to know how they are leveraging the financials for this. In terms of technology prowess they do not seem to be lacking.
- thiago_fm 3y ago
  They are buying everything for cheap, nobody wanted to buy Evernote or Meetup. It's more like they are gravekeepers.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    There's a lot of money to be made in sunset industries, where you acquire cheap and keep it barely running for those still paying.
  - houseatrielah 3y ago
    Fixing meetup, or making something that works is a fun mental-challenge. Something like geo-specific chatrooms that unlock IRL functionality once you get enough members, and remove it if nobody shows up might be worth a try. Or maybe most people in the US live in low-density suburbs and won't go to anything because parking/driving is a hassle, idk.
- bdcravens 3y ago
  They seem akin to the investors buying old dying malls for cheap and optimizing for revenue generation at a lower scale. https://www.investors.com/news/the-investors-who-see-plenty-of-life-in-dying-malls/ https://www.investors.com/news/the-investors-who-see-plenty-...
ericyd 3y ago
Several commenters mention tech meetups languishing post-pandemic, but in my experience Meetup is still an awesome way to engage with the non-tech community in various activities from hikes to board games to movies. I've met several good friends through meetup. No comment on the acquisition, but I hope the platform continues to thrive.
- adamredwoods 3y ago
  Same. I haven't found a product that matches Meetup.com's reach. I've tried Facebook, but it's full of scammers and crazy people, too much for me to filter, but it has worked occasionally.
bovermyer 3y ago
Wasn't there a self-hosted event management app put out by a French startup awhile ago? My memory is foggy on this. They had colorful branding and a mascot.
- seszett 3y ago
  Probably Mobilizon: https://joinmobilizon.org/en/ https://joinmobilizon.org/en/
  - bovermyer 3y ago
    Yep, that's the one. Thanks!
- evacchi 3y ago
  There is also alf.io
evbogue 3y ago
Congratulations on the acquisition! I re-started using Meetup again last year for IRL events in Chicago and I discovered a thriving tech community in my local area. I'm hoping that community can continue into 2024, and that Meetup will be the platform that hosts it. Otherwise there will be some other forum website, I'm sure we can hack one up. Yes, there are the common complaints such as 'too many job seekers' and my personal favorite 'no I'm not on LinkedIn!' but I just want to tell everyone here that contrary to many of the comments on this thread the 'Rona, the AI bubble, and all of the news of tech layoffs did not kill the spirit of IRL meetup in Chicago. I hope all of you will get out of the house this year and try going to a meetup. And meetup organizers, pro-tip: free pizza! Pizza keeps everyone coming back for more.
- em-bee 3y ago
  this is exactly what happened in vienna too. when i was there i had more pizza in a month than i usually have in a year. :-)
orliesaurus 3y ago
Damn I remember the days when we had lanyrd for conferences in tech, and the old meetup for..meetups, feels like so many days ago. The quality bar dropped sadly.
satvikpendem 3y ago
I've been using Supermomos recently for events, they enforce going to events you sign up for in a gamified way so it works well.
rvba 3y ago
Why does meetup have so bad search when you have an account? It literally does not show events in a town with 30 events per week when you are logged in. Seriously it feels like some product manager sabotaged the search, since you get better results when not logged in
- Mortiffer 3y ago
  Same xp
losdos 3y ago
The old days were great for tech events. Amazing speakers in every major city. All tech cos and startups fighting to sponsor and host events in their offices. I remember getting some great meals and bridge views at Google in SF at the HTML5 group, hah. If you were a poor, bootstrapped hacker in the city those days, you could pretty much get fed for free and begged to quit your startup and take a job most days of the week. I’ve just been given the reins myself to be the organizer for a large (defunct) tech group. I’m still figuring out exactly what will bring people back and kickstart things. From my discussions with organizers in other groups, they are having a difficult time finding companies willing to host. Concerns about liability even though the pandemic scare is over still persist, time demand on internal employees and lack of rapid hiring are big blockers. The environment has definitely changed. I really hope the pendulum will swing back again.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  In my experience these meetups at offices typically relied on uncompensated overtime from several employees. I wish employers would compensate or give time in lieu for such recurring overtime asks, rather than pretend it’s extracurricular fun that the workers asked for and shall get as a favor. For hosts and organizers, a pizza meal isn’t substitution for compensation that pays the rent.
  - rmbyrro 3y ago
    The employees used to ask employers to allow usage of office space and to sponsor food. It's not the employer who's asking for a task to be done. Why would you expect the employer to consider this work time that should be paid?
    - wahnfrieden 3y ago
      Sure, often hosts and organizers employers use the events as a recruiting strategy and to promote their engineering brand and so on
      - 3y ago
unsupp0rted 3y ago
Meetup is great in North America, meh in Western Europe and a ghost town in Asia and Eastern Europe, outside of enclaves like the digital nomads in say Bali. Not only that, half the "meetups" are online-only, with crypto bros trying to get you into their latest scheme. And another quarter are legit, but they're attended by crypto bros trying to get you into their latest scheme.
- em-bee 3y ago
  that's the effect of covid. some places are bouncing back. i spent some time in vienna recently. i had a tech meetup event every day of the week. some days i had to choose between two or three events on the same day. many were sponsored with food and drinks. and they were all on meetup.com. the other alternative was eventbrite, and that had a mere fraction of the events compared to meetup.
- amadeuspagel 3y ago
  You can filter online-only events.
kornhole 3y ago
For anyone looking for a non commercial option, https://joinmobilizon.org/en/ https://joinmobilizon.org/en/ has made some great improvements lately.
footlose_3815 3y ago
Same owners as Evernote. Meetup has already led the market in enshittification, and they right next to another enshittified brand. The usage will continue to plummet as long as they squeeze premiums out of organizers. It's sad really, all the old groups are essentially being held for ransom.
philip1209 3y ago
This is just the beginning of tech P/E firms scooping up apps.
- em-bee 3y ago
  meetup has been bought by wework before and survived the wework crash, so i am less worried compared to other buyups. this is probably not an exit of the founders.
pseingatl 3y ago
Prepandemic,Meetup in Bangkok had regular language exchanges which were excellent for both practice and networking. post-pandemic, it kind of died off. You need local organizers who are dedicated.
- hugocast 3y ago
  Bingo. Local organizers are so key.
jimberlage 3y ago
Now that companies are less inclined to have meetups, meetup needs a way to bring the ecosystem back without tanking sales. I've thought about having a tech meetup, and would like to leverage meetup's marketing, but 1. I don't know if this will be a recurring thing more than 2-3 times 2. Without company support, I have to put down my credit card as the organizer, even if the event fizzles out. I would pay for meetup! But I would not pay more than a fair rate for 2-3 events, unless it truly takes off. Looking at the contents of meetup, I'm guessing smaller organizers are in a similar boat. No one wants to pay a monthly subscription for small things, so people who are unsure stay out, and smaller metros just don't have anything but timeshare-y sales pitches that give the organizer an ROI. Meetup should 1. Make the organizer interface free. 2. If you want your upcoming meetup to show up in the list, you pay a one-time per-event fee that is more than the per-month cost of a subscription. This should hopefully bring their market back for tech meetups.
- ivalm 3y ago
  Not sure that’s the solution. I think the issue is poor attendance of existing events, not lack of events.
  - jimberlage 3y ago
    My perception in a non-major metro is that the existing events are all really low quality, and that the quality passion project ones are gone. There are plenty of meetups for people trying to get me to buy their SaaS, but shared interest groups that don't stand to make money from their events have evaporated.
    - ivalm 3y ago
      I host a Meetup just to meet new people interested in startup. I started it because there wasn’t a startup focused Meetup in my area. It’s hard for me to imagine that the $70/6 months is what prevents someone from hosting a high quality Meetup. There is so much more time value (and even money) to hosting high quality Meetup than the fee they collect.
- 3y ago
AlbertCory 3y ago
Nearly all these comments are about tech meetups. My first introduction to Meetup, though, was a long time ago for non-work groups: hiking, movies, dinners, cooking, dogs. I still go to my movie meetups sometimes. There still are hiking events. I thought of Meetup as something that ought to be a 501(c)(3). I have to say that the tech meetups I belong to have about 10x the number of signups.
- hugocast 3y ago
  Mine too. I used to co-host a "New in town" meetup and had a blast the whole time.
- bdcravens 3y ago
  That's the problem for Meetup and most SaaS apps: they aren't running a charity, and need to match up their offerings and demand with those who are willing to pay for their service.
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    Better as a charity, IMHO. I hosted a movie meetup to see Moneyball. Afterwards, I asked the group, "How many liked the movie?" Every hand went up. Then I asked, "How many are baseball fans?" No hands went up. Good times.
    - nunez 3y ago
      Impossible here in Texas. I strongly dislike sports. It is extremely difficult to find other men that do here. By "extremely difficult," I mean "you're going way out of your way to find them" Meetup was a great place to find those people, but the platform seems mostly dormant.
      - AlbertCory 3y ago
        These were almost all immigrant, mostly women: Indians and Chinese. Hey, this is California.
glonq 3y ago
Hopefully this improves the quantity and quality of meetups in my area, which seems to mostly be ESL, toastmasters, book clubs, various fringe nutters, barhoppers, and old people who want to go on short walks.
- nunez 3y ago
  at least you have that. Here, it's mostly churchgoers and "business networking"
Projectiboga 3y ago
Wow they held out for decades. We used to go to a nontech vegan families meetup. One of their coders was in the group so we got the scoop that they did their own capital raise and really resisted selling out. I guess a mix of dramatic slowdown in their business and the founders and investors wanting an exit.
markx2 3y ago
2019 I started a meetup group. My wife had died end 2018. The group was for widows / widowers and it was explicitly for social purposes. No chatting up, no hookups, no 'hunting'. It was good and a few people made friendships, a few others - myself included - would meet regularly for coffee of an afternoon. Being able to talk, to listen, to understand with others who had lost their partners of multiple decades was helpful. Covid happened. Meetup then decided to start charging even more. I was already paying purely for them to host and display some text. Their extra charge put me on the hook for whoever attended. More people = more money. No, just NO. End result was group deleted, we all lost out and meetup seen as hostile. This news? Fuck you.
jaredcwhite 3y ago
Meetup has overwhelmingly been a net-positive for me over the past couple of years unlike most technology platforms these days. I've met some great people locally and felt much more in tune with my IRL community than I would have otherwise. That being said, I've also been sad that Meetup appeared to be languishing as a modern web property. It really needs a "glow up" and general attention to UX so that it feels in line with other major local-based platforms such as AirBnB. It feels like nothing much has been done to improve Meetup since before the WeWork acquisition way back in the day, and if anything it's gotten cheesier with all the crappy ad popups. Perhaps with a parent company that is squarely focused on software and design, Meetup can find its footing again and be that premier destination for all things local event communities. (Can we even talk them into adding ActivityPub support so Meetup's part of the Fediverse? A man can dream!)
TheAdamist 3y ago
Meetup is so absurdly expensive for a glorified calendar and email list that they have driven away every group except for tech company sponsored ones. $180/year for the cheapest plan drove me away. Facebook groups let you do a similar thing for free.
datadrivenangel 3y ago
I run a local data science focused tech meetup group here in Washington DC, and it's hard to beat the discoverability of meetup. We've tried diversifying over the years, and it's hard to beat the discoverability of meetup. It's the opt-in digital equivalent of putting up fliers.
caseysoftware 3y ago
Whoa. I missed this one. I used Meetup for years to power the "Tech Events Network" with 50+ US city-based accounts like https://twitter.com/ATXTechEvents https://twitter.com/ATXTechEvents Over the ~5 years I ran it, it was up to 4M+ impressions/month with a massive newsletter and pushing tons of traffic to tech groups, mostly hosted on Meetup. Then Meetup changed their API policy and said this was "an inappropriate use of the API" and poof, gone. Frustrating as hell because group leaders loved it and most of the traffic was going to them anyway. Arg.
- ja27 3y ago
  Yeah we use Meetup for probably 3-5 events a week at our makerspace. Their gradual decline has had us ready to stand up our own minimal replacement but Meetup.com is so good for discovery, SEO, etc. Their API changes have been a big pain in the ass for us. Just let us pay for access to the older API and we'll gladly do it. Then they turned off RSS feeds and nobody can get any answer out of them about whether it was intentional.
kevinak 3y ago
I feel like Meetup has always been a somewhat bad product. Stuck in the early 00's. When they started charging crazy amounts to organize a meetup I got sick of them. Recently we've been using https://guild.host https://guild.host to manage most of our Svelte Society meetups.
workfromspace 3y ago
Apparently getting acquired by Bending Spoons is a guarantee for layoffs[1]: - In September 2022, Bending Spoons acquired FiLMiC... In December 2023, the original FiLMiC team were laid off - In November 2022, Bending Spoons agreed to acquire Evernote... Evernote laid off all of its existing staff - In January 2024, Bending Spoons acquired Mosaic Group, a mobile app developer. The acquisition also involved the layoff of all 330 existing staff [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bending_Spoons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bending_Spoons

135 points by devops000 3y ago

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22728947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22728947 (Meetup spins off from WeWork after being bought by them for $200 million.)

sschueller 3y ago

Let's hope it's run better than when it was owned by WeWork. WeWork paid $156 million, I wonder what Bending Spoons paid.

mikequinlan 3y ago

Bending Spoons also owns Evernote, which has been thoroughly enshitified. This doesn't sound good for Meetup.

bdcravens 3y ago
Reality hasn't been good to Meetup. At this point, it's just a matter of squeezing the juice out of a dying tree.
- F-W-M 3y ago
  What did reality do to meetup?
  - bdcravens 3y ago
    People stopped going to in-person events.
    - F-W-M 3y ago
      I visited more events post-covid than pre-covid.
      - bdcravens 3y ago
        There's a group of people who were eager for events once the pandemic "ended", but that group is much smaller than those who used to regularly go to events and stopped. Companies like Meetup need scale to be successful.
  - rolfvandekrol 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic
  - pmontra 3y ago
    As a data point, I used to organize a Meetup in the very city Bending Spoons is based at. The last meetup was right before the covid pandemic hit. We never had a new one. We keep using our Telegram channel to exchange news and experiences.
    - em-bee 3y ago
      many places are bouncing back. give it some time. and do promote the idea. likely the problem is that the pre-covid organizers have moved on, so it takes a new generation of volunteers to organize something.
pantulis 3y ago
Product-wise I'd argue that Evernote was in the middle of a deshitification but was financially running on fumes, and the move to Electron was the right one although the release was rushed and it alienated the user base. I find it interesting that BS is a native mobile shop and now they have to manage some frontend built on top of Electron. Growth-wise is another thing, I think they have decided to get rid of the free users and in my opinion they have skimmed too much from the free tier which is basically a "try before you buy" now.
notyourwork 3y ago
Maybe I’m an outlier but I continue to use Evernote. It works well as of last 6 months (have had an account for over a decade) and find it just works well enough to not abandon.
- randerson 3y ago
  Be aware: Your next renewal will be double the price it was last year.
agos 3y ago
they also own Filmic, which has also been thorooughly enshittified. Not holding my breath for Meetup

GavinAnderegg 3y ago

Meetup has historically been a great resource for technology events in my area… but I've found they've become quite "needy" lately. They tried to gamify joining/attending meetups, which leads to a lot of email noise. Maybe some people want to be in 100 meetup groups and attend a meetup every day of the week? But I doubt it's most users. They've also started showing "special offers". You often need to click through them to actually do what you came to the site to do. I understand that Meetup was likely really hurt by the pandemic, but I hope this new leadership can find a way to make interacting with service fun again. It currently feels rather skeezy. EDIT: As noted below, Bending Spoons also bought Evernote and that hasn't gone well. So, this might be a great space if someone is looking to compete!

bdcravens 3y ago
Unfortunately, the heyday of technology events is in the past. Pretty much every business goes through a cycle of desperately clawing for revenue when the core business model falters.
- danieldisu 3y ago
  Yep, those tasty formation and travel budgets are also being squeezed in the quest for profits, reducing the market size for these tech events...
- phkahler 3y ago
  I've been to one or two tech related meetups and they sucked. I've been to many many other meetups and had a great time. Still going every week or two.
vpontis 3y ago
Context / Plug: I'm a founder of a Meetup competitor / successor called lu.ma I think Meetup got in a hard position because they didn't have very many paid events and their communities tended to churn off of Meetup. It's hard to make money as a community organizing tool so they tried a bunch of different ways of making money, including charging guests + showing irrelevant ads which both don't work. Also, Meetup was in a very weird spot before the pandemic. They were bought by WeWork and then sold off in the WeWork crunch. I doubt any of the original team is still there. Anyway, lu.ma is free to use for free events so if there's anything I can reach out with, feel free to ping me at victor@lu.ma

lolinder 3y ago

Meetup was vibrant in my area before the pandemic, but whenever I've checked in afterwards it's a ghost town of groups that are still there but haven't had a meeting in years. To some extent I think the pandemic has permanently altered the landscape of extracurriculars like those that Meetup was supporting, and I'm unsurprised that they're struggling to adapt.

bdcravens 3y ago
I've run a couple of technology user groups, and even before the pandemic, demand was wavering. The advantages of in-person events (mostly for job seekers and recruiters) just don't outweigh the inconvenience for many.
stillbourne 3y ago
Ditto, all the interesting things are gone and the only active groups are "Interesting Singles in their 20s and 30s" No more PUGs for D&D and board games. No tech meetups either.
- smelendez 3y ago
  I think a lot of non-tech events like D&D/running/board games/birdwatching/crafts/etc. now have left Meetup or never were there. I see a lot of these types of events promoted on Instagram and sometimes Facebook, because there's a bigger audience there. There are still some on my local Meetup, though. I also sometimes see Zoom events, especially tech and business-oriented ones, where I frankly wonder if the live videoconferencing format is ideal or just an imitation of what people used to do in person. It's possible that podcasts and YouTube have eaten a lot of this market if people aren't going to get together in person.
  - stillbourne 3y ago
    > I think a lot of non-tech events like D&D/running/board games/birdwatching/crafts/etc. now have left Meetup or never were there. I see a lot of these types of events promoted on Instagram and sometimes Facebook, because there's a bigger audience there. There are still some on my local Meetup, though. Perhaps that's why I no longer see them, I've deleted most of my social media so I don't have access to FB or IG for events.

pantulis 3y ago

It seems Bending Spoons is on a shopping spree, it would be interesting to know how they are leveraging the financials for this. In terms of technology prowess they do not seem to be lacking.

thiago_fm 3y ago
They are buying everything for cheap, nobody wanted to buy Evernote or Meetup. It's more like they are gravekeepers.
- bombcar 3y ago
  There's a lot of money to be made in sunset industries, where you acquire cheap and keep it barely running for those still paying.
- houseatrielah 3y ago
  Fixing meetup, or making something that works is a fun mental-challenge. Something like geo-specific chatrooms that unlock IRL functionality once you get enough members, and remove it if nobody shows up might be worth a try. Or maybe most people in the US live in low-density suburbs and won't go to anything because parking/driving is a hassle, idk.
bdcravens 3y ago
They seem akin to the investors buying old dying malls for cheap and optimizing for revenue generation at a lower scale. https://www.investors.com/news/the-investors-who-see-plenty-of-life-in-dying-malls/ https://www.investors.com/news/the-investors-who-see-plenty-...

ericyd 3y ago

Several commenters mention tech meetups languishing post-pandemic, but in my experience Meetup is still an awesome way to engage with the non-tech community in various activities from hikes to board games to movies. I've met several good friends through meetup. No comment on the acquisition, but I hope the platform continues to thrive.

adamredwoods 3y ago
Same. I haven't found a product that matches Meetup.com's reach. I've tried Facebook, but it's full of scammers and crazy people, too much for me to filter, but it has worked occasionally.

bovermyer 3y ago

Wasn't there a self-hosted event management app put out by a French startup awhile ago? My memory is foggy on this. They had colorful branding and a mascot.

seszett 3y ago
Probably Mobilizon: https://joinmobilizon.org/en/ https://joinmobilizon.org/en/
- bovermyer 3y ago
  Yep, that's the one. Thanks!
evacchi 3y ago
There is also alf.io

evbogue 3y ago

Congratulations on the acquisition! I re-started using Meetup again last year for IRL events in Chicago and I discovered a thriving tech community in my local area. I'm hoping that community can continue into 2024, and that Meetup will be the platform that hosts it. Otherwise there will be some other forum website, I'm sure we can hack one up. Yes, there are the common complaints such as 'too many job seekers' and my personal favorite 'no I'm not on LinkedIn!' but I just want to tell everyone here that contrary to many of the comments on this thread the 'Rona, the AI bubble, and all of the news of tech layoffs did not kill the spirit of IRL meetup in Chicago. I hope all of you will get out of the house this year and try going to a meetup. And meetup organizers, pro-tip: free pizza! Pizza keeps everyone coming back for more.

em-bee 3y ago
this is exactly what happened in vienna too. when i was there i had more pizza in a month than i usually have in a year. :-)

orliesaurus 3y ago

Damn I remember the days when we had lanyrd for conferences in tech, and the old meetup for..meetups, feels like so many days ago. The quality bar dropped sadly.

satvikpendem 3y ago

I've been using Supermomos recently for events, they enforce going to events you sign up for in a gamified way so it works well.

rvba 3y ago

Why does meetup have so bad search when you have an account? It literally does not show events in a town with 30 events per week when you are logged in. Seriously it feels like some product manager sabotaged the search, since you get better results when not logged in

Mortiffer 3y ago
Same xp

losdos 3y ago

The old days were great for tech events. Amazing speakers in every major city. All tech cos and startups fighting to sponsor and host events in their offices. I remember getting some great meals and bridge views at Google in SF at the HTML5 group, hah. If you were a poor, bootstrapped hacker in the city those days, you could pretty much get fed for free and begged to quit your startup and take a job most days of the week. I’ve just been given the reins myself to be the organizer for a large (defunct) tech group. I’m still figuring out exactly what will bring people back and kickstart things. From my discussions with organizers in other groups, they are having a difficult time finding companies willing to host. Concerns about liability even though the pandemic scare is over still persist, time demand on internal employees and lack of rapid hiring are big blockers. The environment has definitely changed. I really hope the pendulum will swing back again.

wahnfrieden 3y ago
In my experience these meetups at offices typically relied on uncompensated overtime from several employees. I wish employers would compensate or give time in lieu for such recurring overtime asks, rather than pretend it’s extracurricular fun that the workers asked for and shall get as a favor. For hosts and organizers, a pizza meal isn’t substitution for compensation that pays the rent.
- rmbyrro 3y ago
  The employees used to ask employers to allow usage of office space and to sponsor food. It's not the employer who's asking for a task to be done. Why would you expect the employer to consider this work time that should be paid?
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    Sure, often hosts and organizers employers use the events as a recruiting strategy and to promote their engineering brand and so on
    - 3y ago

unsupp0rted 3y ago

Meetup is great in North America, meh in Western Europe and a ghost town in Asia and Eastern Europe, outside of enclaves like the digital nomads in say Bali. Not only that, half the "meetups" are online-only, with crypto bros trying to get you into their latest scheme. And another quarter are legit, but they're attended by crypto bros trying to get you into their latest scheme.

em-bee 3y ago
that's the effect of covid. some places are bouncing back. i spent some time in vienna recently. i had a tech meetup event every day of the week. some days i had to choose between two or three events on the same day. many were sponsored with food and drinks. and they were all on meetup.com. the other alternative was eventbrite, and that had a mere fraction of the events compared to meetup.
amadeuspagel 3y ago
You can filter online-only events.

kornhole 3y ago

For anyone looking for a non commercial option, https://joinmobilizon.org/en/ https://joinmobilizon.org/en/ has made some great improvements lately.

footlose_3815 3y ago

Same owners as Evernote. Meetup has already led the market in enshittification, and they right next to another enshittified brand. The usage will continue to plummet as long as they squeeze premiums out of organizers. It's sad really, all the old groups are essentially being held for ransom.

philip1209 3y ago

This is just the beginning of tech P/E firms scooping up apps.

em-bee 3y ago
meetup has been bought by wework before and survived the wework crash, so i am less worried compared to other buyups. this is probably not an exit of the founders.

pseingatl 3y ago

Prepandemic,Meetup in Bangkok had regular language exchanges which were excellent for both practice and networking. post-pandemic, it kind of died off. You need local organizers who are dedicated.

hugocast 3y ago
Bingo. Local organizers are so key.

jimberlage 3y ago

Now that companies are less inclined to have meetups, meetup needs a way to bring the ecosystem back without tanking sales. I've thought about having a tech meetup, and would like to leverage meetup's marketing, but 1. I don't know if this will be a recurring thing more than 2-3 times 2. Without company support, I have to put down my credit card as the organizer, even if the event fizzles out. I would pay for meetup! But I would not pay more than a fair rate for 2-3 events, unless it truly takes off. Looking at the contents of meetup, I'm guessing smaller organizers are in a similar boat. No one wants to pay a monthly subscription for small things, so people who are unsure stay out, and smaller metros just don't have anything but timeshare-y sales pitches that give the organizer an ROI. Meetup should 1. Make the organizer interface free. 2. If you want your upcoming meetup to show up in the list, you pay a one-time per-event fee that is more than the per-month cost of a subscription. This should hopefully bring their market back for tech meetups.

ivalm 3y ago
Not sure that’s the solution. I think the issue is poor attendance of existing events, not lack of events.
- jimberlage 3y ago
  My perception in a non-major metro is that the existing events are all really low quality, and that the quality passion project ones are gone. There are plenty of meetups for people trying to get me to buy their SaaS, but shared interest groups that don't stand to make money from their events have evaporated.
  - ivalm 3y ago
    I host a Meetup just to meet new people interested in startup. I started it because there wasn’t a startup focused Meetup in my area. It’s hard for me to imagine that the $70/6 months is what prevents someone from hosting a high quality Meetup. There is so much more time value (and even money) to hosting high quality Meetup than the fee they collect.
3y ago

AlbertCory 3y ago

Nearly all these comments are about tech meetups. My first introduction to Meetup, though, was a long time ago for non-work groups: hiking, movies, dinners, cooking, dogs. I still go to my movie meetups sometimes. There still are hiking events. I thought of Meetup as something that ought to be a 501(c)(3). I have to say that the tech meetups I belong to have about 10x the number of signups.

hugocast 3y ago
Mine too. I used to co-host a "New in town" meetup and had a blast the whole time.
bdcravens 3y ago
That's the problem for Meetup and most SaaS apps: they aren't running a charity, and need to match up their offerings and demand with those who are willing to pay for their service.
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  Better as a charity, IMHO. I hosted a movie meetup to see Moneyball. Afterwards, I asked the group, "How many liked the movie?" Every hand went up. Then I asked, "How many are baseball fans?" No hands went up. Good times.
  - nunez 3y ago
    Impossible here in Texas. I strongly dislike sports. It is extremely difficult to find other men that do here. By "extremely difficult," I mean "you're going way out of your way to find them" Meetup was a great place to find those people, but the platform seems mostly dormant.
    - AlbertCory 3y ago
      These were almost all immigrant, mostly women: Indians and Chinese. Hey, this is California.

glonq 3y ago

Hopefully this improves the quantity and quality of meetups in my area, which seems to mostly be ESL, toastmasters, book clubs, various fringe nutters, barhoppers, and old people who want to go on short walks.

nunez 3y ago
at least you have that. Here, it's mostly churchgoers and "business networking"

Projectiboga 3y ago

Wow they held out for decades. We used to go to a nontech vegan families meetup. One of their coders was in the group so we got the scoop that they did their own capital raise and really resisted selling out. I guess a mix of dramatic slowdown in their business and the founders and investors wanting an exit.

markx2 3y ago

2019 I started a meetup group. My wife had died end 2018. The group was for widows / widowers and it was explicitly for social purposes. No chatting up, no hookups, no 'hunting'. It was good and a few people made friendships, a few others - myself included - would meet regularly for coffee of an afternoon. Being able to talk, to listen, to understand with others who had lost their partners of multiple decades was helpful. Covid happened. Meetup then decided to start charging even more. I was already paying purely for them to host and display some text. Their extra charge put me on the hook for whoever attended. More people = more money. No, just NO. End result was group deleted, we all lost out and meetup seen as hostile. This news? Fuck you.

jaredcwhite 3y ago

Meetup has overwhelmingly been a net-positive for me over the past couple of years unlike most technology platforms these days. I've met some great people locally and felt much more in tune with my IRL community than I would have otherwise. That being said, I've also been sad that Meetup appeared to be languishing as a modern web property. It really needs a "glow up" and general attention to UX so that it feels in line with other major local-based platforms such as AirBnB. It feels like nothing much has been done to improve Meetup since before the WeWork acquisition way back in the day, and if anything it's gotten cheesier with all the crappy ad popups. Perhaps with a parent company that is squarely focused on software and design, Meetup can find its footing again and be that premier destination for all things local event communities. (Can we even talk them into adding ActivityPub support so Meetup's part of the Fediverse? A man can dream!)

TheAdamist 3y ago

Meetup is so absurdly expensive for a glorified calendar and email list that they have driven away every group except for tech company sponsored ones. $180/year for the cheapest plan drove me away. Facebook groups let you do a similar thing for free.

datadrivenangel 3y ago

I run a local data science focused tech meetup group here in Washington DC, and it's hard to beat the discoverability of meetup. We've tried diversifying over the years, and it's hard to beat the discoverability of meetup. It's the opt-in digital equivalent of putting up fliers.

caseysoftware 3y ago

Whoa. I missed this one. I used Meetup for years to power the "Tech Events Network" with 50+ US city-based accounts like https://twitter.com/ATXTechEvents https://twitter.com/ATXTechEvents Over the ~5 years I ran it, it was up to 4M+ impressions/month with a massive newsletter and pushing tons of traffic to tech groups, mostly hosted on Meetup. Then Meetup changed their API policy and said this was "an inappropriate use of the API" and poof, gone. Frustrating as hell because group leaders loved it and most of the traffic was going to them anyway. Arg.

ja27 3y ago
Yeah we use Meetup for probably 3-5 events a week at our makerspace. Their gradual decline has had us ready to stand up our own minimal replacement but Meetup.com is so good for discovery, SEO, etc. Their API changes have been a big pain in the ass for us. Just let us pay for access to the older API and we'll gladly do it. Then they turned off RSS feeds and nobody can get any answer out of them about whether it was intentional.

kevinak 3y ago

I feel like Meetup has always been a somewhat bad product. Stuck in the early 00's. When they started charging crazy amounts to organize a meetup I got sick of them. Recently we've been using https://guild.host https://guild.host to manage most of our Svelte Society meetups.

workfromspace 3y ago

Apparently getting acquired by Bending Spoons is a guarantee for layoffs[1]: - In September 2022, Bending Spoons acquired FiLMiC... In December 2023, the original FiLMiC team were laid off - In November 2022, Bending Spoons agreed to acquire Evernote... Evernote laid off all of its existing staff - In January 2024, Bending Spoons acquired Mosaic Group, a mobile app developer. The acquisition also involved the layoff of all 330 existing staff [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bending_Spoons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bending_Spoons