Ian Lewis' Blog

For a while now I've been going to local Japanese meetups (set up on meetup.com) to practice Japanese and I recently started going to a local Linux meetup. I enjoy meetups and it's given me a chance to meet some folks that I wouldn't otherwise meet.

Unfortunately meetup.com is going to start charging group organizers a fee per group that they organize ($9 for existing groups for 2005; after that $19). Both the Washington DC Japanese meetup and Northern Virginia Japanese meetup are mature groups with many regular members so splitting costs might be relatively easy or not an issue at all. But the Linux meetup is only 3 or so people right now so it's not really worth paying money to continue to go. It's also hard to attract new members or organizers if you tell them that they have to pay dues or something. I'm thinking established meetups may survive this but fledgeling meetups and new meetups will suffer greatly. No one is going to take the risk of paying $19 a month to start a meetup that may not succeed.

My personal opinion is that this is a money making scheme for sure. The changes page at meetup.com says "How was this decision made? We polled thousands of Organizers, met them in many cities, and listened to you online. We chose the path that keeps Meetup.com most focused on you". I think that's bullplop. I'm sure noone said "Charge us $20 a month for this great service!" No. I worked it out and if half the meetup groups pay the 2005 fee ($9) and half drop then meetup.com would make about a million dollars a month. I wonder if that's reasonable. Their yearly income would be like a 10th of what my software company of 500+ employees makes in a year. I wonder if it really requires that much money to run a database web application, mail some materials, and pay the salaries of 20 or so people.

I think Meetup.com just spelled it's doom and the doom of the meetup groups that I go to. Thanks a lot. I hope they revise their thinking.