Having run Meetups for the last ~4 years or so, with my current one being a nice size (~100/month attend), I can tell you the absolute biggest challenge for myself and for others is getting a good affordable/free space to run the events. As WeWork has so much prime real estate, I can easily see the Meetups being a natural feeder to get more people exposed to their spaces, and also to create community events for those that rent. Seems like a nice opportunity for synergy here. Hope it goes well. Two great NYC companies!

TL;DR is WeWork just an open office but for (way too many imho) many companies/people in one space?

Are Wework spaces similar across the world? I have to work in a central London one sometimes and I find it horrendous; it is almost literally good for nothing; way too noisy and loose for meetings (even in the closed spaces; they are glass and not soundproof) or actual concentrated work (with noise cancelling headphones it is bearable). At lunch, because most of the space is open and attaches to the central area, it smells like as mix of whatever people are eating which can be interesting (kebab onion with garlic sauce mixed with pizza mixed with fish mixed a spicy curry smell) and lingers for a long time. Nice looking wooden floors so when people wear heals you can hear them literally everywhere when they walk around (programmers who are supposed to be focused with noise cancelling headphones all look up every single time; noise, all glass, heals (probably female) so they look). Beer opens at 4 pm so drinking commences at that time too. Too many people allowed in there so if you didn't strictly book rooms they are all full and meetings cannot ever go over time.

It is more a clubhouse than an office. I could not really work there for long stretches so I wonder if all these places are the same as a formula or this one is just unique that way.

I liked Meetup, I didn't like it enough to pay for it. It wouldn't give me information without paying so I stopped using it.

I also note that they terms of the acquisition have not been mentioned. If it is an all stock transaction it could be an example of Wework exploiting their astonishing valuation to buy companies with stock. This was something that happened a lot in the dot com boom and didn't end well. The other thing was startups trading services to each other and the overvaluing them in dollars. For example a startup I worked for gave a database company $110,000 in advertising on the web site in exchange for a data base license and some training. They both reported it as income (we got $110,000 in advertising buys!, we got $110,000 in database sales!)

I don't really understand the WeWork valuation of $20 billion. I guess they buy all their properties so they greatly profit from the rising property prizes in capitals around their world.

I work a lot in coworking spaces and they usually don't seem like a cash cow for the owners. Now WeWork seems to target the B2B and luxury segment of coworking with prices 1,5x-3x of the competitors'. Interesting strategy.

So is the coworking just a vehicle for the appreciating property prices? Or are they much more popular than I thought? Or am I missing something else?

I haven't followed Meetup in much detail, but it seems like they lost their way.

"Meetup" has become a common noun in many circles tech-related and beyond...i.e., most people know about meetup.com and what it does.

But despite this ubiquity, what happened?

I stopped going to meetups a while ago because most just didn't seem worthwhile. A lot of people I know did the same. If this trend persisted across the service, did the company do anything about it?

I dunno. My perception of their failure is anecdotal...maybe they're doing better than it seems to me.

I just find this outcome sad, especially given how rare ventures like this are--ones that bridge the gap between offline and online.

I wish them luck. Meetup itself is stagnant kludge that could have been innovative, other than their stylesheet revamp like 8-10 years ago, Meetup has innovated on zero.

I am sure WeWork will use the platform to drive bodies to their physical locations which is a smart move.

As a frequent user of meetup.com, I feel like it succeeded at making people one-time acquaintances and failed miserably at making lasting connections. I'm a member of several groups and most of these groups do not see any single individual more than once. I won't even mention terrible attendance for just about any groups I've ever been a part of. I think there could've been a lot of improvements made here but meetup really hasn't done anything with the concept for years, which is a shame. I still think this space is ripe for innovation.

I actually like Meetup.

In my home town, I've been able to meet a lot of people in tech (including Civic Tech), government, and data science that I wouldn't have met as easily otherwise since I mostly work from home. Most of the AI/Machine Learning meetups here are 100% full with long waiting lists. And I ended up having a relationship with someone I met at one of the meetups.

Would love to hear from others who run groups/events on Meetup and/or Eventbrite. I used to love Meetup, but the interest has been dwindling and the pricing for Meetup is very odd. You can't run a multi-city Meetup from a single account, which makes it very difficult to expand your Meetup without greatly increasing your costs. Meetup then came out with https://www.meetup.com/pro in order to help you wrangle your cluster of fragmented accounts all over the world. Between Eventbrite, Facebook Events, and Facebook's direct integration to Eventbrite ticketing, I'm not sure I see the point in using Meetup at all anymore.

I get the sense that Meetup has been sharply declining for years now and this was an opportunistic pickup by WeWork.

Most Meetup events and groups have become a vehicle for salespeople and self-promoters.

I'd like to see Meetup offer 1x1 'events', that is, a sub-section of the platform to meet a person who is into the same idea/subject. Otherwise it's lost potential to have everything ride on whenever an organizer happens to schedule a meetup.

The way I (and others in my group) used Meetup was this:

1. Schedule a meetup to meet players ( soccer, in my case) and organize a game at the local ground.

2. Repeat Step 1 for 3-4 months

3. We now have enough regulars and switched over to Whatsapp. Easier to coordinate, schedule games, manage rosters and because Whatsapp is so ubiquitous, you don't need to download/track one more app/website.

4. Exit Meetup.

It was similar for other activities too - board games, AI/ML groups and so on.

Meetup was always going to struggle with a viable business model this way. Groups of people once formed into groups will drift away to more familiar, informal ways of staying in touch.

I think there are a lot of possibilities. Many tech meetups are hosted where people work, so maybe something like Meetup.com event hosting will get bundled in as a WeWork perk. Maybe WeWork can rent space to meetups. Maybe they'll use it to monetize vacant WeWork space. I'm sure Meetup also has a data trove of past meetups.

Maybe monetizing services on top of their longterm real estate leases is the key to profitability: "workspace as a platform". Meetup fits that model well with a huge userbase.

https://qz.com/966956/wework-wants-to-make-its-business-look...

It's a logical vertical integration, at the least.

I was building something similar to meetup for a while but focussed on making new friends instead of networking/paid events.

The thing is, when I sat down and analysed the business model I realised that if it worked successfully, no one would use the platform again. I.e. if you wanted to meet new people, if you used my app and it had a 100% success rate, you wouldn't use it again.

I think that is the difficult problem to solve with an app in this space and explains Meetup's poor UX. If it actually worked, you'd just become friends and switch channels to whatsapp/FB/whatever and cut them out.

I have been sitting on a startup idea in combination of use cases of something like meetup and similar to what WeWork does for a 2+ years. I have no business expertise so any hypothetical chance of success would have been very small, nevertheless I feel like it's been a missed opportunity for me. Would be interesting to see if they go into the route I was thinking of and manage to make something big.

Shameless plug: if you are a sports organizer on Meetup and don't see Meetup going in your direction, you can check us out. Here's a group that moved over from Meetup as a sample: https://opensports.net/@PhiladelphiaVolleyball

I hope meetup doesnt get trashed like the Slashdot, Wired and Huffpost acquisitions. They were destroyed by excessive advertising.

Makes total sense. I run marketing for a WeWork competitor and hosting events is our #1 acquisition strategy.

I like that for a change, a new brick-and-mortar company buys an older web company, instead of the other way around. It drives home the point that being an internet business isn't special anymore. We're all just businesses, and all notable businesses are on the internet.

I am running a Web Engineering Meetup in Düsseldorf, Germany [1] since more than 4 years. This group is quite big (~1.600 people) with 40 up to 100 people per Event (depends on the weather, the topic, the day, if side events happen in the city or not). We run it 100% non profit and community driven. No money is involved for paying speakers or accommodation. This is a fact where we are really proud of, because we believe if we involve money it will make things harder and more complicated. Questions like Who do pay what flight, etc. Of course, we have food and drink sponsors. But they order the food and deliver this to us. No "direct" money involved. We run every month, except of december (because december is a busy month everywhere, company parties, family, etc.). For a german meetup, this is a quite big one (if you compare the topic and the non profit).

I want to tell you what i like and what i don't like about Meetup:

What i like:

- "Advertising" of the meetup via email: This is very good. People will be reminded, it will suggest new people your meetup depends on tags / topics and so on

- Uncomplicated for attendees: Sign up or not sign up, this is quite easy for people

What i don't like:

- The user interface: It is horrible. Especially for a meetup organizer. The editor is so limited, it is not intuitive at all

- Innovation / Change: Since nearly 4 years, meetup has changed nearly nothing. Recently they are working more and more on their iOS app (a lot of updates coming in) and a new brushed layout for the website was released, but it took way to long. Smaller changes, really iterating over it, this is what i am missing.

- Organizing a meetup: They are tools missing. Meetup is a kind of simple CURD app. But really tools for meetup organzers are missing. I know tons of companies who want to sponsor a meetup (location, food, etc.). I see tons of meetups who suffer from finding a speaker or a sponsor. I know tons of speaker who want to test their next conference talk befor eon a meetup to get feedback. Connect them. Make it easy for meetup organizers to organize one. I personally see so much potential in this area. In this regard i often ask myself "What is Meetup doing with all these employees?"

- The "pro" version: This is a joke. I tried it out. I guess the target group are meetup groups that should run all over the world (like the wordpress one). But for normal organizers, useless IMO. I expected so much from it (Statistics, deep insights in my community, what are the members interested in, etc.). So much potential.

The problem with meetup is, that without effort from people meetups will be created, 1 meetup will be held, they are disappointed that only a hand full of people showed up and they will never do it again. Because they realize that organizing a meetup is a huge effort. And only time the number of people will grow. But you need time for this.

I see a lot of groups that were created recently, but never have a meetup scheduled at all. This is sad.

Why i don't create a "better meetup"? I would love to. But the big issue here: Meetup.com has the critical mass. And signing up for a new platform etc. I wouldnt do it as an attendee. Ideas?

My unwritten goal is to provide the opportunity in Düsseldorf to visit a tech meetup every workday. This is what i fight for and i help other organizers around to do this while connecting them and offer them my support and knowledge. A year ago i wrote a blog article about "Lessons learned from running a local meetup" [2]. I think i need to write a new one. I learned so much new things in the last year. And we try to write/document everything we need to do to organize our meetup on Github [3]. Not completed yet, but it is growing.

[1] https://meetup.com/Web-Engineering-Duesseldorf/

[2] http://andygrunwald.com/blog/lesson-learned-from-running-a-l...

[3] https://github.com/WebEngDUS/WebEngDUS

This acquisition makes total sense. It's totally fits the spirit of WeWork (building professional communities) and also gives Meetup that exit that (I think) they've been looking for for a while. (They took five funding rounds!)

Congrats to the Meetup team!

Good thing Upcoming.org finally relaunched.