I think I have a communication problem with meet.hn.
People seem to assume it has been created to setup these kinds of large meetups.
In fact, I created it for small or even 1-1 meetups in the first place. Meeting a single person or a small group of people seems much more interesting, easy and valuable to me.
Of course I'm not assuming everyone thinks the same way, but don't you think there is an audience for that in the HN community?
Again, IME it's not the size of the meetup but the responsibility.
Even in my example, the average attendance is maybe 10-20 people. Sometimes as low as five people.
And some areas only have 5 or fewer regularly.
I think you’re drawing premature conclusions from the dropoff in signups.
All users are probably in the “now what?” Stage. And if more people knew your site was a way to connect with nearby HNers (ie the value prop was higher and better known), you’d have a lot of interest. So classic chicken egg problem I believe. But there are many successful sites that have broken through this phase. In my opinion you should keep it up.
I guess you would have to dig, right?
Well, with meet.hn:
1. You don't have to dig
2. People are more willing to meet on average than a random person on the internet
3. You can also check other locations and other people super fast
For most hn users offering something virtual would be more more inline with expectations and removes those local barriers.
Of course, there’s the moderation issue.
1) Add functionality to auto-setup digital meetups and invite people within 200mi or something. 2) Let people meet in groups digitally, and maybe that spurs them to meet in person.