Meetup.com Commercial to Follow
Scott Heiferman and Matt Meeker are the master minds behind the latest, popular social site helping people with shared interests plan meetings at “actual locations” and build groups online. Meetup.com was conceived in 2001 and to date almost 17 million people have signed up and formed over 90,000 Meetup groups. In the beginning Heiferman didn’t expect to appeal to more than the smaller niche groups and certainly didn’t expect that after 10 years there would be over 90,000 of them.
Meetup launched on June 12, 2002, one day ahead of schedule, with almost immediate success. Heiferman then launched a creative marketing campaign. He searched the internet for groups, everything from blogs to Yahoo groups, for everything you could imagine. They searched for beer lovers, pug lovers, soccer moms; you name it, he searched it. He sent out emails notifying these groups of an up-coming made-up holiday, “International Beer Lovers Meetup Day” and “International Soccer Mom Meetup Day” for example, and informed them to go to the website and find out where to meet in their city. An enthusiastic response was received. Heiferman then met with politician Howard Dean, a democrat from Vermont, that was running for president in 2004. He met with Dean and his advisor to discuss how his new social website could be of assistance to Deans’ campaign. The two connected immediately as each were impressed by the other’s mission. From that day forward Dean spoke these words after every speech, “Join your local Howard Dean Meetup”. Dean’s campaign took off at a grassroots level in an unprecedented way. He lost the nomination but is credited for pioneering the use of the internet for grassroots political organizing. The press coverage won Meetup national attention.
So what exactly is Meetup you ask…
Groups organize events for specific interests that people can join and attend. For example… if enjoy kayaking, then you would look for groups on Meetup.com with the same interest and attend their “meetups” to talk about, learn about, or go kayaking! Same idea for wine lovers, computer geeks, business mixers, and you get the idea. The site makes it easy for anyone to organize a local, regional, national or international group based on whatever their specific area of interest is…. literally any interest. The site also makes it easy for the social visitor to find one of these groups, based on their interests, join and attend the meetups face-to-face. Over 170,000 meetup groups have been formed and over 9,000 groups get together in local communities each day; each one with the goal of improving themselves or their community and enjoying their common interests together. Just think how powerful this could be for your business!
This social networking site is a self-organization platform. The uniqueness of Meetup.com comes in when individuals and groups connect based on common interests and then schedule gatherings to carry out those interests. Meetup’s mission is to revitalize local communities and help people around the world self-organize. They believe that people can change their personal world, or the whole world, by organizing themselves into groups that are powerful enough to make a difference. You can find a Meetup group for just about anything, even a group for women under 5'8" that want to play basketball, or a hula hooper that doesn’t want to hula alone in Arizona. No matter what your interests are, you can find or create a Meetup group to bring together people of like minds. Time to get create here…
Keep in mind it’s not all about recreation, night life and moms. There are also many professional groups that meetup about business interests, education and networking. Every area from general networking, marketing, entrepreneurship, venture capital, web development, product development, social media, business strategy, startups, and a BIG ETC. has meetup groups formed to help and promote each other. Professionals are using it as well as stay at home moms, as well as retired hula hoopers.
Ok, there is a little drama…
The site is not without its problems (minor compared to). Apparently everyone needs a little drama in their lives. Back in March of this year, if you were attempting to connect with some like-minded people through Meetup you were put on hold for a short period of time. The site was hijacked by a cyber-hacker demanding $300 to call off the assault. Yes, $300. The attack kept the site offline for about 4 days. In a blog post by Heiferman the site was fighting a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) campaign against it’s servers. They aim was to disrupt the target’s (Meetup.com) online business, or knock its website offline by overloading its servers with more traffic than they could handle. Heiferman received and email warning him the attack was going to happen, and it could be stopped for $300 USD. The attack began simultaneously with the email and Meetup’s servers were quickly overwhelmed with traffic and of course its servers went down. Within 24 hours the team got the site back up just to be attacked again.
In the end Meetup.com was attacked three times. The attack was sophisticated but the minimal dollar amount suggested amateurs were behind the keyboard. It may have been easier just to pay the $300 requested, but this may open the company up to future extortion efforts. Instead, Meetup.com has built a strong team behind their social network and look to be keeping all of our activities safe for the time being.
All in all…
Meetup has come a long way in the over ten years it has been in existence. Heiferman and Meeker had the right idea. People want to connect via the internet, so they made a site that allowed them to do just that, and people seem to be flocking to it. This will be a social network that will be around for a long time to come. Its numbers may not equal that Facebook’s, but it has an extremely unique purpose, and Meetup is carrying it out like well-oiled machine. This is definitely one site to watch as it grows into the future.
Have an idea and need players to make it happen? Join Meetup.com and I bet you will soon find plenty of like-minded people that want to be part of this great opportunity.
-By Antonette Martucci
