And of course there are other places to go for co-ordinating group activities. Who ever said there weren’t?

As for the basis of Meetup’s charging decision, you’d have to ask them. I imagine that at least in part it’s because it’s hard to measure the difference between joining and participation, and they may have decided simplicity outweighed other factors.

Does JOINING do it? OR just belonging / continuing to belong? OR must one actually participate?

Do I get “better mileage” out of joining one group per year for five years, or joining all five the same year? What would be the respective values of belonging to ten groups concurrently for a year, five groups concurrently for two years, one group for ten years, …?

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As to Meetup charging, why is it a flat, per-group fee, not pegged to group size?

There ARE other net-based mechanisms for coordinating group activities, and I know of at least a handful of Meetup groups that are moving over to one or another of them.

That $9/$19 monthly fee sounds colossal, but it’s divided across groups that range in size from 5 to 75, so the actual revenue that comes in isn’t huge. Several of those groups were charging 10 bucks per member per month and run for profit; many more were shoestring coffeeshop get-togethers where people ordered tapwater. It’s a really difficult service to price and pitch.

As for not paying: well, I respect the decision not to buy something that you used to get for free, but a bait-and-switch complaint seems ungracious. When a small company says they can no longer afford to spend someone else’s money to give you something you don’t value financially, that’s their right. You’re not obliged to buy, and they’re not obliged to borrow money to serve you for free.

I won’t pay, because I don’t use the service, but it doesn’t mean I’m mad at Meetup for helping me find free Spanish conversation exchanges for a few months. And if the NY Spanish Language Meetup Group doesn’t want to pay 25 cents a member a month, well, then they can go to Craigslist too. I wish them well whatever they do.

I take back my warm fuzzy encouraging post. I thought it was per year.

People get angry and a lot of them leave. But you don’t get angry unless something is important to you. And what do we pay for other than what’s important? (like US Weekly or fancy jeans).

Anyway, it seems like what MeetUp has in its favor is that they’re not charging for community, they’re charging for the convenience of easy access to community.

Like bottled water.

You’re right: I don’t want to pay for something that has been free. But that’s only half of it. I hate bait and switch schemes, and this feels like one. And the services Meetup provides? I can do it all myself so very easily.

A while back I got numerous letters from Meetup, trying to convince me to take on the VOLUNTEER group organizer role for Meetups. Nowhere in that mail did they mention that organizers would be expected to start collecting money from group members and sending that money back to Meetup. I’m pissed off enough as a (former) Meetup member. I’d be way more pissed off if I had volunteered my time to organize Meetups, and then found out about the money collecting thing. Sheesh.

It’s just so easy to organize a group these days. The old ways still work just fine. Or put a simple note on Craigslist once a month, and you’re done! And it’s free.

I’ll be interested to see what happens to Meetup now that they’ve started charging. Maybe bajillions of Meetup members will see enough value to send in their monthly fees, but I won’t be among them.