[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Has meetup.org been replaced by anything?
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Ask HN: Has meetup.org been replaced by anything?
In ~2015 when I was living in Chicago and frequently traveling, I
could reliably find something interesting to do through Meetup.org.
It seems that that are far fewer things being listed now. Are there
really fewer things being organized in general or have people
gravitated to another site/app?
Author : syedkarim
Score : 57 points
Date : 2023-10-03 21:41 UTC (1 hours ago)
| dcoupl wrote:
| Couchsurfing.org may be worth a try. They have a website that I
| used to find other people to hangout with via their "connect with
| other travelers" feature. I have used it in San Francisco and Bay
| Area as well as traveling the world such as in Thailand and it
| worked great for me at that time. It really did work to find and
| connect with real people and events in person for a given locale.
| I see now that they are requesting a donation to even use their
| website now so YMMV.
| arp242 wrote:
| Have you used it post-COVID? Because in my experience the
| platform more or less died during COVID (although it had a long
| sickness before that).
| tasuki wrote:
| Whatever happened to Couchsurfing, it ain't good. I log in to
| my account, and I'm greeted with an option between two ways to
| send them money. I click "Manage Account" and the options there
| are "Data Export" and "Deactivate or Delete". Thanks for all
| the good times, but screw them for behaving like this.
| monksy wrote:
| No it's not.
|
| CS has moved to a pay to use model and they're putting pressure
| on their hosts. A lot of people have dropped their account.
| NikxDa wrote:
| I find this question really interesting because to me, the use
| case appears very clear, and the idea itself should be appealing
| to a wide variety of audiences, yet there is no popular solution.
|
| I'd love to see more activity in this area. Through
| digitalization, we're missing out on a lot of human interaction.
| Meeting up with like-minded people through social gatherings is a
| great way to get it back.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| > Are there really fewer things being organized in general or
| have people gravitated to another site/app
|
| There was that whole pandemic thing.
| claytonjy wrote:
| I used to go to a lot of tech-oriented Meetups pre-pandemic, and
| even helped organize a few.
|
| But then there was COVID, and I moved many states away, and it
| doesn't feel like that scene bounced back to pre-pandemic levels
| in either my old or new cities.
| stusmall wrote:
| Same. I used to really enjoy going to them. A few of my
| favorite local ones tried to become a global online only thing
| which just kills the point for me. I spent enough time on calls
| during the day, I don't want to do it for fun too.
| claytonjy wrote:
| Yup, I've taken the same approach to conferences.
| mxmilkiib wrote:
| Upcoming.org is back, not used or really liked at though, just
| noticed the other day
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| I ran a relatively large Software Development meetup in Las Vegas
| with 500+ members, and it was really the pandemic that killed it.
| Tried to bring it back but interest just wasn't there for a while
| and I kind of lost touch with the other people I organized it
| with. A lot of the other big local meetups also went to online
| only and the meetup scene here is a lot worse than it was before
| in general. It wasn't a move to another platform as far as I
| know.
| losteric wrote:
| MeetUp introduced a price change (increase) in mid/late-2019
| which most of my local groups protested as not feasible... just
| in time for the pandemic. During the pandemic, it seems most
| groups in my locale went virtual with FB pages or Discord
| groups with some Reddit/Twitter presence for announcements, and
| stayed there.
|
| MeetUp didn't make any moves to exploit post-pandemic
| opportunities. imo it's dead at this point, there's so many
| zombie communities with stale recurring events that discovery
| is poor, and I've seen a high flake-rate for any events
| organized there (presumably too many low-engagement old
| accounts).
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Idealist answer: https://joinmobilizon.org/
|
| Real answer: Discord.
| moystard wrote:
| Always amazed by the breadth of products in the Framasoft
| suite. I wish there were more users and contributors (and I
| include myself in that list).
| veqq wrote:
| Couchsurfing has a lot of events nowadays. I don't use it, but
| some friends occasionally invite me to things they find on it.
|
| Meetup still runs strong in some areas.
|
| For a time, FB groups carried the burden, but that fount's since
| dried up.
| rvba wrote:
| Is there a way to get unfiltered search? When Im logged in and
| search for events in my town, I carefully set the filters for
| 2miles, then onsite events... it doea not show all events. When
| not logged in, or when accessing those events I can find them. It
| feels like being stuck in an "algorhitm bubble".
| continuational wrote:
| We still use Meetup for our functional programming meetup that's
| been going on for about a decade, but I gotta say as an
| organizer, it's a very buggy piece of software.
|
| Editing an event never goes smoothly, it pretty much always eats
| half of your edits, etc.
|
| It's also not exactly free. But it's risky to try to move a large
| group onto some new platform, so here we are.
| manicennui wrote:
| I think the pandemic killed a lot of groups. The surviving groups
| are still pretty active on MeetUp.
| manicennui wrote:
| There are also a lot of virtual groups now. The Chicago Clojure
| group was never super active even before the pandemic, but
| there is a London Clojure group that puts all of their videos
| online.
| thejarren wrote:
| In SF Bay area, and a few other cities: https://lu.ma/ and
| https://partiful.com/ are the most common (for new tech events)
| right now. Discovery isn't great, but it's what everyone is
| using.
|
| Luma is rolling out more discovery features, and I search twitter
| for "lu.ma San Francisco" to find other events sometimes.
|
| Nothing that covers the feature set of Meetup though, but much
| better to use.
| solomonb wrote:
| Oh Meetup. I miss you.
|
| I first started using Meetup in the middle to late 2000s in the
| Bay area. It almost kick started my tech career after meeting a
| ton of people at a computer music event. I wasn't quite ready yet
| and made a detour through moving to LA, starting a pirate radio
| station and then becoming a carpenter in the art world for 5
| years.
|
| Meetup was there for me when I finally re-engaged with software
| engineering and computers. I would go to events almost weekly and
| met tons of interesting people who taught me about all sorts of
| subjects from 3d printing to category theory. I got to see the
| inside of many different startups and eat a ton of bad pizza.
|
| All the way up to the pandemic i was a regular participant. I
| don't think I have been to a single event since the pandemic. I
| still live in the same place and do the same sort of work. I have
| a really hard time motivating myself to use the site and whenever
| I do, I find the schedule rather sparse. I have heard the same
| story from others many times.
|
| Perhaps this is post-covid trauma? Or perhaps this is part of the
| price we pay for shifting so hard to remote work? Or perhaps this
| is the result of the shitty Meetup UX making it difficult to find
| groups I relate to? I don't know, but I suspect it is all of the
| above.
|
| I miss the sense of IRL community provided by my local meetup
| groups.
| archarios wrote:
| I've been finding a lot of things to do on Bloom. But it's kind
| of catered to specific audiences/areas it seems.
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(page generated 2023-10-03 23:01 UTC)