WeWork's Meetup slaps RSVP fees on events ‒ then tells everyone not to panic amid backlash Netizens are scrambling to find or build alternatives to Meetup.com – after the event-organizing app maker indicated it would charge people $2 per-RSVP. Previously, it didn’t cost a single cent to click the tick mark to confirm that you’d like to attend a particular free event organized via Meetup. Earlier this month, Meetup …
I've never been involved with Meetup or WeWork...
but, maybe they should offer meet organizers the choice of how to pay for the service. Let the organizer choose how much the repliers pay to join the meet. There should be a minimum cost to the organizer before the meet can be registered. And, once the Meetup income from any cost of repliers exceeds some amount set by Meetup, Meetup no longer charges the organizer. Or, make it graduated - the organizer pays up front, and repliers pay, as chosen by the organizer, first paying down what the organizer paid, then the rest going to Meetup. Everyone should be happy with something like that. Assuming, of course, that it is implemented and described properly.
Under the new scheme the organiser has the option of covering the attendees fee. But as pointed out in the article, the radically increases the cost of running a meetup.
It isn't just that the fee is applied to the attendee, it's that for organisers or all but the smallest or least frequent evernt this is a massive increase in total fees, whoever pays them.
If you want a good laugh take a look at WeWork's S-1 filing where they quote, "Among the approximately 255 million potential members across our 280 target cities globally, we estimate a total opportunity of $3.0 trillion."
I can't wait for one of these alternatives to kick is as Meetup is an awful platform that I hate giving money to.
They have a good position and give the best roi on getting new members but there platform is shonky and unreliable, half baked make-over still has old site pages in place and nothing's moved in a year, the mobile app is just the worst.
In fact, I'm going to go sign-up to help build the alternative listed..
It is a truly awful platform that unnecessarily removed Markdown support from event descriptions and still provides attendee lists as CSV files disgusised as XLS files, but it does have the reach. You can already opt to charge people for attending but this introduces additional complications. But something is needed because, frankly, the lots of people sign up to events and never turn up. This can lead to additional costs or exclusion of other people who would like to attend.
If they would only bother to maintain and continue to develop the platform, such as adding support for public nicknames but private real names, required for insurance or workplace security purposes in many cases, I wouldn't mind paying the fees as much. It would also be nice to be able to ban "no-show" easier: I currently have to mark them as such and then ban them individually.
us? I mean us Grumpy's.
If any of the events that I organise (not using meetup I hasten to add) started to get adverts for other things then many of my fellow grumpies would get even grumpier and simply stop going.
There is a cause and effect (Thanks Issac) to everything. Far to many people only think about the former and ignore the latter.
I hate ALL adverts. Anything that gets repeatedly advertiesed to me gets put on my 'Do Not Buy' list. That list gets longer almost every day. now where's the 'up yours icon?'
In its absence, all advertisers and ad companies can 'eat this'
You rank right up there alongside politicians, lawyers, lobbyists and Car Salesmen for the chop come the revolution.
It mostly seems to be recruiters (and, indeed, workspace providers) finding new ways to reel in clients. And why do they always seem to provide pizza?
I've just been looking at room hire for real-world social/educational activities and the going rate for a church/community hall seems to be around £20/hour for a room that would easily host 50 people. I think that puts WeWork's view of "what the market will bear" in some perspective.
Yes, upfront payment almost certainly formalises a contractual arrangement between parties. This may or may not be something you want to do, but refunds are certainly a complication and Meetup allows people to cancel whenever they want. We do charge for our local events (rooms and equipment it turn out aren't free) but I'd quite like to keep Meetup and PayPal out of the payment handling.
@Korev: I suspect that there are many people who have never heard of Meetup. I have often thought that something like this would be a good idea, but didn't know that anyone had crystallised the idea. It seems likely that the people I mix with have never heard of it either, or someone would have mentioned it.
What's wrong with organising a meeting by email or WoM?
I help organize events for a small social group. Most of our members don't plan that far ahead, and even many of the regulars don't use email. We're also always looking for new faces, or for occasional members to join us at an event.
Meetup gives us a calendar, email list, reminders, attendance tracking, event tracking (history and also comments and ratings), and visibility to people who might be interested but never heard of us.
Before Meetup, we had a custom-written calendar on our web site. Our email list was on Yahoo Groups. On a good week, I would call a few people to tell them about the event. Attendance was tracked (or not) by whoever led that event, using whatever method they used.
What other platforms could we use? Small social group, open membership, limited funds and time. I'd like to avoid Facebook.
I'd like to avoid Facebook.
Well, there you have it. You'll have to pay somehow. I guess it's either ask people to create a Facebook account, or pay two dollars to attend your event. 99% of people (not counting this community) don't give a crap about what Facebook collects.
Really, other than "Facebook is evil", what was Meetups selling point over Facebook?
disclaimer: never used Facebook, but if teens can accidentally invite thousands of people to their birthday parties, seems like getting your event out to the masses is not difficult using Facebook.
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