The Official Meetup HQ Blog

Behind the One Million Join Month

by Kathryn

You may not know it yet, but if you joined a Meetup in January, you broke a record. We recently announced that people joined a Meetup over one million times in January. 

 

 

 

 

When people see this graph they immediately ask what caused the jump. So we figured we’d share what we’ve learned. 

 

1: Unleash the network

Meetup is a thriving ecosystem comprising millions of members across a vast range of groups who collectively RSVP millions of times a month. We call it the Meetup Graph, since your Meetup group memberships tell a robust story of who you are, as well as connect you to so many others who eventually become part of your story. 

After investing in tools and functionality within the group for years, we placed some bets on network discovery and the results came back big. All of our recent experiments surface the interconnectedness of the network.

 

2. Build on existing behavior, don’t create new ones

Through years of systematically observing how people navigate the site, we've learned the not-super-shocking truth that people really want to see... people (and what Meetups they are in). Member profile pages are one of the most visited spots on the site, but scoping these out used to require clicking back and forth across several pages. 

In June, we introduced a better way to explore people in Meetups by pulling some of the most interesting information forward into a member widget. This little guy makes browsing Meetups way more engaging and has the added benefit of helping members find new groups that would be perfect for them. We can now promote an action we want people to take (joining Meetups) by better serving a behavior we see them already doing. 

 

3. Death to dead ends

Call it flow, chi, or UX, but don’t ever call it a dead end. Users should always have fun/engaging/purposeful stuff to do on your site. If they take an action and are faced with the equivalent of the dark alleyway, they’ll turn around or leave completely. 

We rethought all the flows on Meetup and ensured that the “last step” was actually something else they could be excited about. People RSVP to Meetups millions of times a month. Now we make it easier for you to discover other Meetups and people to connect with each time you RSVP. If something catches your eye, you could easily wind up RSVPing yet again. 

 

We launch every weekday here at Meetup. These are just a few of the experiments that led up to January. February was big too, with over 2 million RSVPs in one month.  Who knows which new milestone we’ll hit next, but we have a pretty good idea of how we’re going to get there. 

 

Kathryn is on Meetup's Community Team.

Holler at her on Twitter @kathrynfink

| More

Guest Blogger: Using Pinterest to promote your Meetup

by Kelly, Organizer Nashville Hiking Meetup

Pinterest, the visual social bookmarking site, seems to be everywhere in the blogs and industry articles. TechCrunch just reported that Pinterest has become the fastest independent site in the U.S. to hit 10 million unique visitors in one month.

But I’ve seen plenty of comments from my friends on Facebook such as “I don’t understand Pinterest. What’s the big deal?” I have to admit, I was scratching my head for several weeks after joining the beta, thinking it just a pretty scrapbook for girls.

Until…my friend Hippie Dave posted a message on Nashville Hiking Meetup’s discussion board saying, “I think you should make a ‘best of NHM’ photo album so that people can stop by the site and see the most beautiful photos from time to time.” His point was, he loves looking at our event photos but doesn’t want to sit through an album of 250 photos taken at just one event. (We average 5 events per week. Do the math.)

It’s a great idea, though, since I’ve said for years that our event photos and videos have likely been the second best promoter of Nashville Hiking Meetup behind word of mouth.

Yes, this could be accomplished on the Meetup site itself. Create a new photo album, call it “Best Of,” scour the thousands of photos that members have uploaded over the years, copy the image URLs or download the image file, and re-upload the images to my Best Of. Then monitor the uploads on a regular basis and repeat the process for each future event.

There are many issues with this model:

• Duplicate files on the Meetup site. Server space is cheap but not free. Somebody’s paying for it even if it’s not me directly.
• How would visitors actually find this photo album? There’s no way to feature a specific photo album on the main page.
• If I want to “own” the Best Of album, how do I keep members from accidentally adding photos?
• How does an “internal” photo album promote the Meetup to the outside world?
• We have a lot of great videos. How can we feature those, too?
• Yet another thing for me to manage? How much time is this going to take per week?

Enter Pinterest

In a matter of seconds, I created a Hiking Tennessee pinboard, and began adding content to it.

Seconds after that, a few of my followers on Pinterest had re-pinned, or essentially shared (or liked), images and videos from my new board. This could catch on.

One of the most valuable features of pinning content is that the pins point back to your original post or source page. So if someone wants to click through, they are taken to our Meetup page or to our YouTube page or Flickr page; wherever the original media is posted.

Pinterest is also so stripped down of features that it’s easy to get started. I love the “Pin it” button that you can drag to your browser’s tool bar to pin anything while you’re browsing the web. (Note, I’ve had some compatibility issues between the “Pin it” button and Chrome. It won’t find compatible media on some pages so I just switch over to Firefox temporarily.)

Instant “Best of” album

I’ll be very interested to see, in Google Analytics, how many referral visitors Pinterest ends up sending to Nashville Hiking Meetup. Just a handful so far, but stay tuned.

 

Kelly is the Organizer of two of Tennessee's largest and most active Meetup Groups: the Nashville Hiking Meetup and the Chattanooga Hiking Meetup. This post was originally published on Kelly's How to Run a Meetup blog, which is loaded with great advice for Organizers. 

| More

Tech Talk : Trends

by Kathryn

We discovered quite a surprise when we ran the numbers for February's trends and records among Tech Meetups.

We already knew that the title of largest Meetup in the world belongs to the New York Tech Meetup, and has for some time. Around 800 of their 20,000+ members meetup monthly to watch demos, stay on top of the latest local tech news, and connect with one another. At that scale, you'd think they'd be the unparrellelled big fish of the tech world... But they just got some competition. 

The DC Tech Meetup started one year ago, but in terms of RSVPs, they're already gaining on the NY Tech monolith. DC Tech Meetup had 999 RSVP's in February, which actually would have put them over NY Tech last month; however, NY began coordinating additional Meetups last month so more of their members could participate beyond the one "main event."

Here are the top ten Meetups with the most RSVP's in February.

NY Tech Meetup - 1957 - New York, New York

DC Tech Meetup - 999 - Washington, D.C.

Bay Area Game & App Development - 840 - San Carlos, California

Start-Up Chile - 767 - Santiago, Chile

New Tech - 750 - Boulder, Colorado

Gaming & Mobile Entrepreneurship - 720 - San Francisco, California

Hackers and Founders - 668 - Mountain View, California

San Francisco Ruby - 622 - San Francisco, California

SFBay OpenStack - 610 - San Francisco, California

London Java Community - 547 - London, England

 

To crown the fastest growing Tech Meetups, we looked at the percent growth of members between January to February. It turns out that every Meetup in the top ten spots was created in January, and did a great job of getting people excited to join in the new adventure. We look forward to seeing them in other leaderboards soon!

 

Design Startups - 181 - San Francisco, California

Innovation Warehouse - 124 - London, England 

Big Data Hands On - 116 - Sunnyvale, California

Agile Holland - 116 - Dordrecht, Netherlands

MapReduce Hadoop Design Pattern - 115 - Redwood, California

Tech in Motion: Silicon Valley - 95 - San Jose, California

Realtime Matching In Mobile Apps - 93 - San Francisco, California

HTML5 Canvas Element Users Group - 91 - New York, New York

Tech PopUP Bay Area - 89 - Palo Alto, California

Phoenix MongoDB User Group - 89 - Phoenix, Arizona

 

Wanna see yourself in Tech Meetup Trends? Start your own tech Meetup Group, or schedule a Meetup if you already organize one!

Check out all of Meetup's Tech Talk series here.

Kate is Meetup's Community Development Lead. Reach her on Twitter @kathrynfink

| More

Guest Blogger: Make your next Meetup a S.L.I.C.E.

by Devon, Co-Founder Social Fluency

Meeting new people is tough. Making genuine connections is even harder. We've put together five things that you can do to have more fun and be more social at your next Meetup. Think of the following as your Meetup checklist:

1) Slow Down When you move quickly, others may perceive you as nervous or uncomfortable. Being excited and engaged is important – but focus your energy. You want to maintain control of your body language and voice. It’s the difference between a disco ball and a laser beam: the disco ball is wild and fun but gives you a headache after a while… a laser can cut through steel.

2) Loud Voice: Speaking quietly sub-communicates that you aren't sure of what to  say. In a noisy environment, you want to speak loudly enough that people can hear you over other conversations—this is particularly important when you first start talking to someone. Once you make that first impression, you really just can ride that wave – everything you do later will be rooted in the confidence you demonstrated early on.

3) Interrupt People: You will rarely have the perfect, unobstructed opportunity to meet the people you really want to talk to. You don't want to interrupt somebody's emotional story of love and loss, but you shouldn't feel afraid to engage a group of people who seem interesting. Just say, “Hello, don't let me stop you," to whoever is speaking at the time. After you get an idea of what they are talking about, toss something in. It's a lot better than hovering around people waiting for a chance to join the conversation.

4) Commit Fully: If you hesitate, people pick up on that, and they’ll see you as someone who isn't used to making new friends. This habit is what we call orbiting—you are kind of in someone else’s personal space, but not actually engaging them directly. It comes off as awkward for everyone involved. If you go in strong and really plant your feet, people will treat you like a person they want (or should want) to talk to.

5) Expect Success: How would you act if you knew that the people you were walking up to were going to LOVE you? You would approach them with almost no fear at all. Now, we don't want you to simply pretend that everyone is going to love you… (Well, we do, but that will come with practice.) For now, we just want you to think, maybe… maybe they will be super happy that I have come over to say hello. If you assume the best case scenario, then the best case scenario is more likely to happen. Making friends and meeting new people is a mental game. Expect success. Once you see the benefits, you'll understand why it is so important.

Connecting with others is the most important thing we can do, so make sure you get out there and actually show up to those Meetups. Who knows who you will meet?

For your next Meetup, give these tips a try—think of the Meetup as an opportunity to try some stuff out, regardless of the outcome. You’ll be surprised at how the smallest change to your behaviors will create better relationships.

Good luck and have fun!

Devon OB Ash is Co-Founder of Social Fluency, a school based in San Francisco that teaches advanced level social skills for a more fulfilled and successful life, both personally and professionally.

He is the Organizer of several Meetup Groups, including the Vancouver Social Freedom Meetup and Social Mastery in San Francisco, and has spoken at many other Meetup Groups to help members become more socially fluent. 

| More

Tech Talk : 1K Club

by Kathryn

January was a big month on Meetup, and we've been taking a look at some of the things that made it so special. I've been digging specifically into the tech community on Meetup, and want to celebrate the tech Meetup Groups who made it into the 1K Club in January. From Tel Aviv to New Zealand to Seattle, they welcomed either their 1,000th RSVP or member. 

There were a couple extra interesting highlights to point out. Startup Funders & Founders makes it to 1,000 members in under 100 days, and they also celebrated 1,000 RSVPs. DC Hadoop struts into both lists as well, and two of NetSquared's chapters represent.   

Before we sign off, we have to give a shout out so special that we don't (yet) have a nifty icon for it. The Silicon Valley iOS Developers' Meetup made it to 10,000 RSVPs! They've been a hub for iPhone developers since 2008, with monthly Meetups that bring together 100-200+ people each time.

There are still two days left to make it into February's celebration. If you're the organizer of a tech Group, be sure to schedule a Meetup! And if you're looking to get involved with all the fun as a member, be sure to RSVP for a tech Meetup near you.  

1,000 RSVPs

IL TechTalks  - Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel

Vancouver Web Design - Vancouver, Canada

Auckland JVM - Auckland, New Zealand

Austin Web Design & Developer - Austin, Texas

Tech4Good - New York, New York

PDX Web & Design - Portland, Oregon

Net Tuesday Philly - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Hadoop DC - Washington, D.C.

Southern California WordPress - Los Angeles, CA

Los Angeles Drupal - Los Angeles, CA

Stamford Tech - Stamford, Connecticut

Hacks/Hackers Boston - Boston, Massachusetts

SF Edu Tech Innovators - San Francisco, California

Startup Funders and Founders - San Francisco, California

1,000 MEMBERS

Startup Funders and Founders - San Francisco, California

Community Managers - New York, New York

Health Technology - San Francisco, California

Seattle Google Technology Users Group - Seattle, Washington

Hadoop DC - Washington, D.C.

New York Ruby Meetup - New York, New York

Net Tuesday Vancouver - Vancouver, Canada

Atlanta iOS Developers - Atlanta, Georgia

Boston New Technology - Boston, Massachusetts 

 

Check out all of Meetup's Tech Talk series here.

Kathryn is Meetup's Community Development Lead.

Reach her on Twitter @kathrynfink

| More

Oscar party with the SoCal Movie Fanatics

by Tegan

Hollywood is getting geared up for the Acadamy Awards this weekend, and movie buffs all over the world are excited to see filmmaking's best and brightest honored.

In Los Angeles, the SoCal Movie Fanatics have been preparing for the Oscars with Meetups to check out best picture nominees and animated shorts over the last few weeks, with one last Meetup to squeeze in a few more films this Saturday before this Sunday's big event. 

Sunday night, SCMF willl be getting together with the Westside Events Meetup Group for their 4th(!!!) Annual Oscar Party -- complete with raffle prizes and special award for the member whose own Oscar Ballot most closely mirrors the choices of the Academy.

Not in sunny California? There are more than a thousand Movie Meetups in 20 countries -- it's not too late to find a Meetup for fellow cinema lovers near you.

Tegan is on Meetup's Community team.

| More

Hackathon @ NewHQ!

by Tamara

Last week Meetup's Dev Team hunkered down for a two-day Hackathon. By definition, a "Hackathon" is creative time set aside for Developers to collaborate on short-term projects and create prototypes of potential websites, applications and products.

At the end of the second day, everyone showed off what they'd built, which coincided with a party to celebrate our recent office renovation.

For a behind-the-scenes look, check out Kathryn Fink's fantastic video:

Here's a quick rundown of how much creativity came from two days of caffeine-fueled programming:

Meetup BFF computes how compatible you are with another Meetup member. It calculates a BFF index based upon Meetup Group memberships you share, photos you're tagged in together, your interests and your Facebook friends.

The Meetup Photo Copier helps you export photos you've taken at your Meetups to other photo sharing sites.

Hungry/Thirsty is a way to find Meetups that serve free food and drinks.

The Meetup Tribune is a print newspaper (and corresponding site) that displays upcoming Meetups by category.

PhotoCropper allows you to customize how your profile photos are cropped.

The "Stalking Horse" app identifies members with whom you've attended the most Meetups, and then recommends more of their upcoming Meetups to you.

The CS Stats display catalogues Meetup's Community Team activity. It shows how many messages we're receiving, how many replies we're sending, and various other stats about the nature of our inquiries.

SnackbotMUP takes a photo of HQ's snack cart every 15 minutes and automatically tweets it.

 

 

Dog Hunting uses an Arduino with a Bluetooth shield to track Lola and Doug's movements (our beloved office dogs), and then displays the results on a heatmap.

 

 

 

I n case you're wondering, Lola (on the right) covered more square footage in the office than Doug (above).

 

 

 

 

 

Check out the Dev blog for all the details on these hacks and more.

 

Tamara is on Meetup's Community team.

| More