This morning, the Meetup website lists 1,609,193 members worldwide, 193,981 Meetup groups and 5,439 Meetup topics. Digging deeper, you can find that there are currently 924 DFA Meetups, 773 Democratic Party Meetups, and 807 John Kerry Meetups. It also announces, ‘Important: Organizers will soon have to pay a small monthly fee on behalf of their Meetup Groups.’

Following the link, it says, “How much & when? The regular Group Fee is $19/month, but Organizers of current groups get a special 2005 rate of $9/month if they pay now.”

They mention, “How was this decision made? We polled thousands of Organizers, met them in many cities, and listened to you online. We chose the path that keeps Meetup.com most focused on you.”

I remember that survey. It asked how much people would be willing to pay for special services. During the survey, I commented that I thought this was a really bad idea. Meetup has gone on to act on the idea, and the response online seems to be that Meetup has jumped the shark.

There have been a lot of discussions on various mailing lists about this. For example: “I too expect a huge outcry, and that Meetup will lose a lot of groups.”

Examples of the outcry include:
“When I started on Meetup in the fall of 2003, Meetup charged us $12.99 PER YEAR for their service. When I re-signed up this fall, that price had jumped to $39.99 per year (a $300% increase), which I thought was outrageous at the time but paid it anyway in the interest of DFA and saving our democracy. BUT NOW, they are asking for a monthly fee of $19.95. That is $239.4 per year, another ***600%*** increase from what
it was and an 1800% increase over what it was in 2003. Umm...Not no, but HELL NO.

I made an agreement with Meetup.com to pay ~$40 for one year's service. They have now renigged on that agreement and are asking for more money under different terms. That is a breach of contract, completely unfair, and just NOT the way to do business.”

And,
“My group is new and I think if potential members hear that they are going to have to pay to be in the group, that is going to be a huge deterrent. I shouldn't have to pay to be a grassroots organizer.”

Already people are talking about what they can do instead.
“Add me to the outcry… It's pretty obvious to me that we need an open source alternative designed for political groups.”

“However, this presents a good opportunity for DFA to seriously consider getting out of Meetup.com for good and building our own grassroots system tailored to our specific needs.” This has met with lots of nods of agreement and fairly specific discussions about tools to help this happen.

One person suggested that the business model may not be that bad an idea:
“As much as I think they are killing off 90% of their groups this way, they will likely keep the 10% they really want”

However, another questioned this:
“As soon as any organizer, for whatever reason, has to pay, some of those organizers will choose not to. And as soon as that happens,
meetup will no longer fulfill that role, as the central place for all
DfA meetups to be listed.

In other words, no matter what else happens, meetup.com will be providing a substiantially inferior service, inherently as a result of charging an organizer fee.”

An email from Burlington says, “During this transition, Democracy for America will pay for the monthly cost of your DFA Meetup.” That works out to be nearly $10,000/month that DFA will pay Burlington. I’m not sure what they used to pay, but somehow, I don’t expect to see DFA continue to pay at that rate, and I have to wonder what ‘during the transition’ means.

Here is my take on this:

I have long been a supporter of Meetup.com and have spoken often with Scott at conferences. I would like to point out that they haven't been offering their service gratis. Initially, they were charging a commission to the venues that hosted Meetups. This was fairly complicated and didn't work out well. Then, they started charging groups like DFA for using Meetups. I don't know how much different groups paid, but it was far from gratis. On top of that, they collected funds from people signing up for Meetup+ status.

I recognize their need to be a sustainable service, and never objected against the previous business models. However, this time, I think they have made a grave mistake. To me, one of the great benefits of Meetups is that it has had the lowest barrier to entry. Anyone could start a Meetup. It provided a great centralized way to find out what is going on. They have just put up a large barrier to entry which will diminish their brand as The Place to find out where people are meeting up.

My objection isn't that they are trying to get money for their service. I know they need to do that. My objection is that they are doing it in a way that I believe is self-destructive.