Meetup

Meetup was founded in June 2002[4][5] by Scott Heiferman and four co-founders.[6][7] The idea for Meetup came from Heiferman meeting his neighbors in New York City for the first time after the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers.[8][9] Heiferman was also influenced by the book Bowling Alone,[10] which is about the deterioration of community in American culture.[11] Some initial funding for the venture was raised from friends and family, which was followed by a funding round with angel investors.[12]

The early version of Meetup generated revenues by charging a fee to venues in exchange for bringing Meetup users to their business.[13] Once enough users added themselves to a group, Meetup would send the group members an email, asking them to vote on one of three sponsoring venues for the group to meet at.[13][14] Within a few months of Meetup launching, 56,000 users had joined the site.[5][10] In 2003 Meetup won the "Community Websites and Mobile Site" Webby Award.[15]

Meetup was originally intended to focus on hobbies and interests,[4] but it was popularized by Presidential hopeful Howard Dean in 2004.[16] Meetup developed paid services to help the Dean campaign to meet with Meetup users.[10] Dean also publicized Meetup groups of supporters in his speeches and on his website.[17] At the peak of Dean's campaign, 143,000 users had joined Meetup groups for Dean supporters.[4] Afterwards, Meetup became a routine part of internet campaigning for American politicians.[10][18]

Meetup started charging a fee to group organizers in early 2005.[19] Initially, changes to the website had to be approved by two committees.[20] In 2009, Meetup started running hackathons, where employees came up with new features that would be implemented if their coworkers supported it.[20] The website was redesigned in 2013.[21] Meetup had 8 million users in 2010,[22] and 25.5 million users by 2013.[23]

In 2013, Meetup acquired a struggling email collaboration company called Dispatch.[24][25] In 2014, a hacker shut down Meetup with a DDoS attack, the hacker claimed to be funded by a competitor.[26] In 2017, Meetup created 1,000 #resist Meetup groups in response to the Trump travel ban.[27] This caused some Trump supporters to leave the site[27] or call for a boycott.[28] Meetup also partnered with a labor group to organize anti-Trump protests.[27]

Meetup was acquired by WeWork in late 2017 for about $156 million.[29] Some former employees said there was a 10% layoff after the acquisition.[30] In 2018, Scott Heiferman stepped down as CEO and former Investopedia CEO David Siegel took his place. Heiferman became Chairman of the company.[31][32] In October 2019, Meetup began to test a different pricing model in two US states,[33] reducing the costs that must be paid by organizers of $23.99/month or $98.94/six months, but requiring users to pay a $2 fee in order to RSVP for events, leaving several users angry.[34] In March 2020, WeWork sold Meetup to AlleyCorp and other investors, reportedly at a substantial loss.[35] The deal added AlleyCorp's Kevin P. Ryan onto Meetup's board.[3]

Meetup is an online service used to create groups that host local in-person and virtual events.[36][37] As of 2017, there are about 35 million Meetup users.[38] Each user can be a member of multiple groups or RSVP for any number of events.[39] Users are usually using the website to find friends, share a hobby, or for professional networking.[39] Meetup users do not have "followers" or other direct connections with each other like on other social media sites.[39]

Meetup users self-organize into groups.[39] As of 2017, there are about 225,000 Meetup groups in 180 countries.[37] Each group has a different topic, size, and rules.[16][37] Groups are associated with one of 30+ categories and any number of more than 18,000 tags that identify the group's theme.[39] The most popular categories are "adventure and outdoor activities, career and business, and parents and family."[16] Most events are on a structured schedule each week or month at a local venue,[37] typically on evenings or weekends,[39] though more and more events are being held virtually with a pivot to allowing online events as a reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic. Between March and October 2020, Meetup had hosted more than one million online events.[40]

Meetup groups are run by approximately 140,000 organizers.[37] Any Meetup user can be an organizer.[16] Organizers set up groups, organize events, and develop event content.[16] They also pay a fee to run the group, under the expectation of sharing the cost with members that attend events.[37] Meetup has policies against organizing meetups around a commercial interest that are not compatible with their usage policies, hate speech, or groups that do not meet in-person.[37] Their policy regarding commercial activities has generated some confusion with some claiming that no commercial activities are allowed, even going so far as to claim that a free event that has a sponsor for food and drinks is against Meetup's policies.[16][37] But purely commercial activities are allowed in their policy, as long as they are, in essence, a Meetup style activity. That is, a winery could organize a wine tasting event through Meetup charging commercial rates, but not use Meetup to simply promote their wines or only sales portal.

• Official website