Hacker News Reader

Comment by joe_fishfish | Hacker News Reader

Sadly most people (at least in my country) use Facebook for this.

Probably. Purely anecdotal and it may just reflect the company I keep, but Meetup seems to have dropped off my radar and that of people I know. I can easily believe that many groups paused during the pandemic and never kicked back off again; I've certainly seen that behavior with a lot of groups generally.

Here it was charging for RSVPs that killed it. Everyone dropped it like a hot potato when they announced it.

It can be tough to get people to pay an ongoing fee for something that's often used for people to do casual recreational activities rather than one of the many free alternatives--even if they're not quite as suited for the purpose.

Meetup had a way to do this: make it opt-in by organizers, then increasing organizer price later on, perhaps even drastically, to incentivize the new structure. Over a year, say, even on organizers who didn't opt in, they could likely double their revenue per subscription with minimal churn.

Instead, their messaging strongly implied that, while it was still being tested, this would be mandatory, destroying community trust. An absolutely flubbed rollout.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/15/20893343/meetup-users-fu...

https://wptavern.com/meetup-com-introduces-rsvp-fees-for-mem...

In Italy Meetup was monopolized by a populistic political movement in the '10s and nobody use it since then.

Aside from supporters of popular political movement?

Nobody goes there any more, it's too crowded

Was it guilt by association? Last time I used meetup you only joined the groups you were interested in, none of mine were political

Reply on news.ycombinator.com