Just my luck. I was thinking that Meetup might be a good way for me to find some people in Sydney with common interests. Only last weekend I'd joined a few groups, but now I see that Meetup has shot itself badly in the foot and it might not be long for this world.
The service has been free for most people, with a premium membership option for people who wanted to pay for some extra features. This week Meetup announced a massive price hike - going from completely free to a charge of $US 19 per month for each group. There is also a temporary $US 9/month rate for people who cough up the cash early, but I can't see many taking advantage of that. Rather Meetup is just going to lose most of its active user-base as if it were a sieve.
Yes, Meetup has the right to try and make some money, but it's gone about this in totally the wrong way. These are just my thoughts as someone who's relatively new to Meetup.
Firstly, they leave it to the Organizer of each group to be responsible for paying for this charge - and recovering the costs from the membership. Meetup already had enough problems with attracting and retaining people to fill the thankless Organizer role. So what do they do about it? They charge Organizers for the privilege of doing this unpaid work, and expect them to recoup Meetup's charges from the group members. I can't think of a better way of ensuring that all the Organizers drop like flies than these proposals, and don't expect new Organizers to come running to fill these gaps. Asking a person to do such an unpleasant task as collecting money from people - that is the worst thing they could have done.
Secondly, a price rise from free to $US 19 per month per group is just too high, and this is speaking as someone who is more willing than most people to pay for internet services. A LiveJournal paid account is $US 25 per year - and LiveJournal is such a better site than Meetup. Yes, I know that if a group has 19 members and the Organizer performs a miracle and gets everybody to pay for their share, that's only $1 per month, but I don't accept that this scenario could ever really happen.
Before these changes, I could have possibly had my arm twisted to pay a few dollars a month to use a site like Meetup, but certainly not now - because Meetup has been hemmoraging active Organizers and members and groups since these changes were announced - at least if my experience is anything to go by. A lot of the groups which I joined last weekend didn't have an Organizer or at least an active Organizer, but every single active Organizer I've encountered has quit (Meetup should know that active Organizers are the lifeblood of meetups, if anything the company should be paying them to stay around!), and a majority of them are setting up Meetup alternatives on Yahoo! Groups.
This is leads me to Meetup's third mistake. It's not as if Meetup members are a captive audience. Much of what Meetup does is emulated on sites such as Yahoo! Groups, which are free. Meetup's way of RSVPing for meetings might be one of the more useful and less common features, but even that is available on new paid services such as getalife.com.au