|
|

MeetupMeetup.com is an online social networking portal that facilitates offline group meetings in various localities around the world. Meetup allows members to find and join groups unified by a common interest, such as politics, books, games, movies, health, pets, careers or hobbies. Users enter their ZIP code (or their city outside the United States) and the topic they want to meet about, and the website helps them arrange a place and time to meet. Revenue has come from a variety of sources, including fees paid by meeting locations (such as restaurants and bars); advertising on the site; and, formerly, a "Meetup Plus" option which members could choose to pay for. On April 12, 2005, Meetup announced that it would begin to charge each group a monthly fee to be paid by the group organizer; each organizer will have the option to collect fees from the members of that group in order to pay the monthly fee. The new fees are being implemented during the month of May 2005. From 2002 to 2004, Meetup.com was one of the fastest-growing online social networks in the world. It took center stage in the American political consciousness in 2003, when it attracted the attention, first of campaign staff for President of the United States candidate Howard Dean, then of pundits in New York City and Washington, DC, and was soon being used by a number of candidates for the Democratic nomination, to build and energize their grassroots support. By January 2004, 30% of the site's members were signed up for the three most popular topics: ''Dean in 2004'', ''Wesley Clark in 2004'', and ''John Kerry in 2004''. Following Dean's departure from the race, the "Dean meetup days" became the model for similarly-organized "National Democratic Party Meetup Days." [http://democrat.meetup.com] Meetup.com has also been used by conservatism Internet organizers, including the Heritage Foundation's Townhall.com and the re-election campaign of George W. Bush. As of May 1, 2005, Meetup reported having 1,595,165 members worldwide, with 194,472 local groups covering 5,454 different topics. The most popular topic of all, with 143,403 members, was "Democracy for America" [http://dfa.meetup.com/], which directly replaced the Howard Dean Meetup topic upon the termination of Dean's Presidential campaign. ==History== Meetup.com was founded in 2000 by Scott Heiferman, Matt Meeker and Peter Kamali. :"The primary inspiration was the book ''Bowling Alone'', which is by Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam about the decline of community in America and how people don't know their neighbors anymore," Heiferman said. "The Internet does a number of wonderful things, but it treats geography as irrelevant. We still live in a world where the local level is extremely important. ... We are providing a service that revitalizes the Internet for local communities." [http://www.npost.com/interview.jsp?intID=INT00099] :"The founders of the company knew people were staying in front of their computers, DVD players and TVs more and more, and losing personal connections," explained Meetup vice president Myles Weissleder. "After 9/11, they started thinking they could help do something positive in the world by having people reconnect—not with people in chatrooms across the globe—but in their own communities." [http://press.meetup.com/archives/000067.html] Some of Meetup's earliest press coups resulted from active initial support from the Slashdot community. They ran their software on similar platforms, and had a large, successful "International Slashdot Meetup Day" in early July 2002. As a result, Meetup got frequent publicity boosts from Slashdot before and after that event, and were soon a byword in geek circles. [http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/17/237241] Interest from hobbyists and fans of all stripes grew steadily. Their next surge in popularity and exposure came early in 2003, when politicians campaigning for the Democratic Presidential nomination collectively started to use Meetup to coordinate their grassroots movement. "In Meetup.com's original concept, the sessions are leaderless, just folks with similar interest," Knight Ridder reported in February 2004. "But it didn't take long for savvy political campaigns to have a staffer or volunteer show up to collect names and addresses and hand out material for the candidate." Howard Dean's presidential campaign took Meetup very seriously, and by February 14, already had 1200 supporters signed up [http://press.meetup.com/archives/000056.html]; a month later, there were over 5,000. "We fell into this by accident," Dean said later. "I wish I could tell you we were smart enough to figure this out. But the community taught us. They seized the initiative through Meetup. They built our organization for us before we had an organization." His first personal realization of Meetup's potential occurred when he attended a New York City meetup on March 5, 2003 where he found hundreds of enthusiastic supporters waiting to greet him. "I've never seen anything like that, with no advance people, totally self-organized by a bunch of citizens," said Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi. "It was a really great moment." :"Meetup quickly became the engine of Dean's Internet campaign," reported ''Wired'' magazine's Gary Wolf. "Back then, the leading group on the site was a club for witches. Zephyr Teachout, Dean's director of Internet outreach, describes sitting across from campaign manager Joe Trippi in the early weeks and hitting Refresh again and again on her Web browser. 'I was obsessed with beating Witches,' she says. 'Witches had 15,000 members, and we had 3,000. I wanted first place.'" [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.01/dean.html] :"His rivals grudgingly concede that Dean, 54, has clearly tapped into something," the ''Washington Post'' reported in June 2003. "He is attracting the largest crowds of the nine Democratic contenders -- which his staff attributes almost entirely to his campaign's Internet reach. His supporters arguably are the most intense for this early in the process, tens of thousands of them self-organizing in about 300 cities once a month through their online contact, a Web site called Meetup.com." [http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0629-04.htm] By the time Dean suspended his campaign for the candidacy in February 2004, there were over 180,000 supporters signed up via Meetup worldwide. Soon after Meetup began acquiring this political sheen, media attention blossomed. After John Kerry and John Edwards emerged as the first- and second-place contenders in the January Ohio primary, the number of Meetups for Kerry and Edwards supporters spiked up dramatically. "Registrations for Edwards rose 44 percent to 3,949 people, up from 2,751. Kerry's registrations rose 22 percent to 22,076, up from 18,140," reported the ''National Journal''. ==See also== *Glocalization *Internet activism *Virtual community ==External links== *[http://www.meetup.com/ Meetup.com main site] *[http://wikipedia.meetup.com/ Meetup.com Wikipedia site] *[http://press.meetup.com/ Official collection of press clippings at Meetup.com] *Jim Cashel, "[http://www.onlinecommunityreport.com/features/heiferman Interview with Scott Heiferman, MEETUP]," Online Community Report, August 2002. *Debera Carlton Harrell, "[http://press.meetup.com/archives/000067.html Meetup.com Links Together the Like-minded]," ''Seattle Post-Intelligencer'', March 8, 2003. *Lisa Napoli, "Like Online Dating, With a Political Spin," ''New York Times'', March 15, 2003. *Gary Wolf, "[http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.01/dean.html How the Internet Invented Howard Dean]," ''Wired'', January 2004. *Chris Gray, "MeetUp.com Working to Become a Force in Politics," Knight Ridder, February 8, 2004. *Nathan Kaiser, "[http://www.npost.com/interview.jsp?intID=INT00099 Interview with Scott Heiferman]," nPost, April 20, 2004. *"[http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/04/politics/main557004.shtml Howard Dean's Internet Love-In]," CBS News, June 4, 2003. Note: Portions of this article were taken from a [http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Meetup.com similar article] in the Disinfopedia. Politics and technology Social networking MeetupMeetup==European meetings 2004== There are some European meetings that will happen in June/July 2004 together with Jimbo in Berlin, Genoa, Munich, Paris... if you want to set up one for the UK please do so and let us know :-) User:Fantasy 12:05, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC) :The centre of English-speaking Wikipedian mass is probably London, I would guess. Are the locations being determined by Jimbo's movements? User:Pcb21 User_talk:Pcb21 12:32, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC) ::Should somebody draw attention to this on the Wikipedia:Village pump? I think more regular users will spot it there than on the front page (I spotted the summary in my watchlist rather than the link itself). Also, Pete seems to have conveniently forgotten that the Wikipedia:Wikipedians/United_States, Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Australia and (parts of) Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Canada are also English-speaking - but London is certainly ''a'' centre of mass, and the one that would be relevant to me. - User:IMSoP 14:04, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC) :OK, I have put it to the village pump. And: Jimbo is simply following invitations, it is not he who imposes this. If you don't organise, then there will be no meeting. And: Pete has not forgotten. London IS the english center in EUROPE (see above) :Thanks for help :-) User:Fantasy 19:18, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC) ::Sorry, I was thinking in terms of a Jimbo european tour but wasn't explicit about it, and simply meant that London would be the best place for a meetup involving English-speaking (i.e. British and Irish) European Wikipedians with Jimbo. Anyhow Jimbo has just written on the mailing list that he doesn't plan to be in the UK this summer, but does plan to be there in Summer 2005. User:Pcb21 :Oh, I had not seen the 2005 in his email... I thought, he was staying the rest of the time in the UK. That makes it more clear. Thanks for correcting me :-) User:Fantasy 19:39, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC) :PS: Jimbo wrote "so I do need to not over-schedule.", just if someone wants to organise another meeting, don't take it for granted that Jimbo will come. But a meeting is alway nice, why not oranising one nevertheless! :-) ::User:IMSoP checks the Pump carefully in some confusion, as this is still not mentioned, and finally discovers it in the edit history. So, are we going to try and organise a meeting (Jimbo or no) or not? If we are, there's no point the 3 of us talking to ourselves on here, we need to tell people that something's going on. So either it should stay on the pump, with an amendment that Jimbo will most likely ''not'' be involved, or, erm, see you all next year? - User:IMSoP 21:02, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC) :Just some examples: * In Munich we are meeting every one or two months. * In Berlin also some Wikipedians started to meet (i think once a month) :I was wondering, why there is nothing like this happening in english speaking countries. :BUT: I am not living in a english speaking country, so I can/will not be the one to organise it. :Someone living in London can organise a "London-meeting" whenever he wants (next week, next month, in the Summer... whenever) : So, if you are living in an interresting place: SET A DATE AND START ADVERTISING (village pump, mailinglist, main page, ...), you will get to know a lot of interresting people! : Just do it, its absolutely worth it :-) User:Fantasy 09:59, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC) ::Call me unforgivably lazy but I would prefer to go to something someone else has organised rather than have that responsibility thrust upon me! User:Pcb21 User_talk:Pcb21 18:42, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC) If anyone is interested in doing one in Seattle, I'd be glad to be involved. I know we have at least a few very active Wikipedians here: myself, User:Lukobe, User:DanKeshet, probably ohters where geography never came up... On the other hand ''nothing'' is going to drag me onto a Wikipedia mailing list. -- User:Jmabel 22:44, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC) More out of curiosity than anything else---what's going on at these meetings? It seems ''planning'' is probably better done over email where everyone can participate, so are these presentations, or just social gatherings, or something else? --User:Delirium 22:58, Feb 27, 2004 (UTC) == USA meet up == Feel free to discuss the subject. User:Sam Spade 05:26, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC) :Don't feel like organising it yourself, Sam? -- User:Tim Starling 05:30, Mar 8, 2004 (UTC) ::What? thats what I'm doin, see here [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup#USA_meet_up] (sorry, shoulda put that link here! :S User:Sam Spade 05:32, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC) :I thought you were paranoid about people knowing your real name and where you live? Anyway - I'm stuck on the west coast on that day. --User:Maveric149 05:36, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC) ::Jimbo gave me the idea (see the top of the page). I had a change of mind on that subject, and it can be discussed elsewhere, but in short I think being a real person is a better way to go. And yeah, I didn't expect a big turn out, but thanks for the thought. User:Sam Spade 05:43, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC) :Is midnight on a Sunday night the most appropiate time? Some of us have work to go to :-)! User:Pcb21 User_talk:Pcb21 08:54, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC) ::I have mondays off, and work 2nd and 3rd shift. I work Sunday, but I get off in time to go there. I'll be there anyways, my co-workers and I go there sundays. I don't expect a huge turn out, but it will be cool to meet wiki's. If you would like to schedule additional meet ups (at times and places convenient to you), that would rock too ;) User:Sam Spade 09:45, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC) :::A good ressource to get people to know about the meeting, is to poste a link on the discussion page of the people registered in Wikipedia:Wikipedians/United_States. Advertisement helps ;-) User:Fantasy 18:13, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC) ::::I already contacted everybody in a state nearby, and in my state. I suppose I could contact the entire USA as well, but it seems a bit unrealistic... I'll think about it! User:Sam Spade 21:45, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC) This July, O'Reilly is sponsoring their [http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2004/ Open Source Conference] here in Portland, Oregon, which is where I live. If any of you are planning on attending this event, feel free to drop me a line, & let's see if we can't organize a BOF session (or just have a few beers at one of the local brewpubs). -- User:Llywrch 04:28, 23 May 2004 (UTC) ==London meet up== 7pm on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday evening in Central London would suit me just fine, thanks! User:Pcb21 User_talk:Pcb21 10:21, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC) :I could do those days too if there ever is a London meetup, or maybe Birmingham would be more central? User:Angelauser talk:Angela 08:11, Mar 9, 2004 (UTC) ::There are probably enough UK Wikipedians to support both, at some point in the future. If we went for a big event with a wide net, I would vote Birmingham too. I guess I implicitly had in mind a lower key after-work event in a pub or something. User:Pcb21 User_talk:Pcb21 09:14, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC) :::Though thinking about it, an internet cafe might be more appropiate than a pub, depending on the extent of physical addiction to Wikipedia :-). User:Pcb21 User_talk:Pcb21 09:14, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC) and now Angela has noted that Jimbo will be in the big smoke in early June. Not sure if he announced that on the mailing list (I delete a lot messages)... anyone know if there is anything being organized. is it worth talking about organizing something on this page? User:Pcb21 User_talk:Pcb21 15:05, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC) : Meetup{| class="toccolours" style="text-align:left; margin: 0 0 0 2em; background:#fee;" align="right" |+ Wikipedia:Meetup- [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Template:Meetup&action=edit (edit)] |- |Wikipedia:Meetup/DC1 || May 7-8, 2005 || – |- |Wikipedia:Meetup/Boston/2 || April 26, 2005 || – |- |Wikipedia:Meetup/London3 || March 26, 2005 || – |- |Wikipedia:Meetup/Tampa1 || January 15, 2005 || Quiz |- |Wikipedia:Meetup/Seattle2 || January 15, 2005 || Quiz |- |Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC1 || December 12, 2004 || Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC1/quiz |- |Wikipedia:Meetup/London2 || December 3, 2004 || Quiz |- |Wikipedia:Meetup/Seattle1 || November 6, 2004|| Wikipedia:Meetup/Seattle quiz |- | Wikipedia:Meetup/Boston/1 || July 31, 2004 || User:Jimbo Wales/Boston/Quiz - Wikipedia history, current events and Meta issues |- |Wikipedia:Meetup/London1 || June 5, 2004 || User:Jimbo Wales/2004-06-05/Quiz - user pages |} Meetup==Explanation of recent rework== #Contact info doesn't belong in a Wikipedia article; people can go to the Meetup.com site for this. #The Wikipedia:Meetup link is a proper dablink, so its being placed at the top instead of the bottom is fair. #The rest were standard date/year links and minor cleanup. — Stevie_is_the_man!">User:Stevietheman Talk">User talk:Stevietheman | Contrib">Special:Contributions/Stevietheman 11:00, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC) :Hi, Stevie. I don't know how I reverted your changes. I don't have any problem with your rework. I remember looking at a diff file of this article the other day, and I must have accidentally clicked on the rollback link without realizing it. Sorry about that. --User:Sheldon Rampton 05:01, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC) ::No problem. :) — Stevie_is_the_man!">User:Stevietheman Talk">User talk:Stevietheman | Contrib">Special:Contributions/Stevietheman 11:06, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC) See other meanings of words starting from letter: MMA | MB | MC | MD | ME | MF | MG | MH | MI | MJ | MK | ML | MN | MO | MP | MR | MS | MT | MU | MW | MX | MY | MZ |Words begining with Meetup: Meetup Meetup Meetup Meetup Meetup Meetup.com Meetup/Adelaide Meetup/Austin Meetup/Boston Meetup/Boston Meetup/Boston/1 Meetup/Boston/2 Meetup/Boston1 Meetup/Boston1 Meetup/Boston2 Meetup/Cape_Town Meetup/DC1 Meetup/DC1 Meetup/London Meetup/London Meetup/London/December_2004 Meetup/London/images Meetup/London1 Meetup/London1 Meetup/London2 Meetup/London2 Meetup/London3 Meetup/London3 Meetup/New_Orleans Meetup/Northern_Europe Meetup/Northern_Europe Meetup/NYC Meetup/NYC Meetup/NYC1 Meetup/NYC1/quiz Meetup/NYC1/quiz Meetup/NYC_2004 Meetup/Seattle Meetup/Seattle Meetup/Seattle/November_6,_2004 Meetup/Seattle/November_6,_2004 Meetup/Seattle1 Meetup/Seattle1 Meetup/Seattle2 Meetup/Seattle2 Meetup/Seattle_quiz Meetup/Seattle_quiz/Answers Meetup/Seattle_quiz/Page_2 Meetup/Silicon_Valley Meetup/Tampa1 Meetup/Wikipedians_of_the_East_Coast_field_trip Meetup/Wikipedians_of_the_East_Coast_field_trip/Date Meetups |
These materials are based on Wikipedia and licensed under the GNU FDL
YouTube.com videos better site than Turbo Tax 2007 |
|
|