We love that you are participating in real, face-to-face community. We believe that meeting up offline is a harder thing to do than staying online...but it's ultimately much, much more rewarding. Clearly a lot of you agree - 4.5 million people have now registered for Meetup.com and we're hitting 1.6 million RSVP's a month!
We listen very seriously to the feedback we get from you, and while we can't fulfill everyone's request, we're committed to making Meetup better than ever.
So in a few weeks we'll release some exciting new updates that will help organizers run their Meetup Groups better and will improve the overall site experience for both organizers and members. Here's what we're planning:
Spring cleaning - a new look and feel to the site
We watched organizers, members, and brand-new visitors navigate the site and found a long list of ways to make it easier to use. Don't worry, we haven't removed any of your favorite features, just a lot of clutter. It's a redesign of the site, but with the emphasis on making it clearer and easier to use. Think of it as a "spring cleaning." And after this launches, we're going to keep tweaking the site based on your feedback.
First of all, we changed some of the wording on the site. "Meetup Groups" are the groups that hold in-person "Meetups". Also, Shouts are now called Greetings, which we felt better reflected the way people use this tool to communicate.
One of your top requests was to list more than one Meetup per Meetup Group on your main home page, so we separated Meetup Groups on the left, and all Meetups on the right. In addition, organizers now see the Meetup Groups they organize pinned to the top of their lists.
Overall, the new design is meant to play down Meetup HQ content and give the spotlight to your text, photos, and content. We simplified the Meetup Group home page, and placed emphasis on the What's New feed. You can now edit your Meetup Group's main headline. We made it easier to navigate multiple pages in the About Us section. And by popular demand, we separated Message Boards and Mailing Lists on the left navigation.
Boxes now expand on the Calendar page if you have multiple Meetups in one day, a request from super-busy Moms Meetup Groups. This page also demonstrates our easy icons for actions you can take.
We completely redesigned the Organizer Help and Tools section into one simple page, now called Organizer Resources. You'll find the Organizer's Checklist here, too. Your Group Settings are now directly accessible from the left navigation, and are grouped in simple chunks rather than one long list.
The different ways to find a Meetup Group are now combined into a single "Find a Meetup" link. Our new City Calendar Page (above) is cleaner, easier to read, and features a fun sample of photos. The photos are from upcoming (public) Meetups - one from each day that has Meetups happening.
Meetup Places - find a place to hold your Meetup
We heard from many of you that it's a struggle to find the right venue to hold your Meetup and that you would like to know what venues other Meetup Groups are using.
So we created Meetup Places. It's a collection of searchable venues created, rated, and used by other Meetup Groups in your area.
Once you find a venue, you'll see ratings and reviews written by any Meetup Group that's been there, not just your own. We'll also let you know if any other Meetups have activities scheduled there.
Meetup Places is powered by you! Organizers decide which venues to make searchable and which are private - there are 100,000 venues with a million ratings and reviews waiting to be shared!
Organizers and members rate and review the venues in the post-event survey, which in turn updates the venue info. Ah, the cycle of life, er, we mean venues!
Payments - an easier way for organizers to charge their members to attend their Meetups.
Are you an organizer who needs to cover costs, pay for a venue, grow a great organization or even pay your self? We've made it easier for organizers to charge their members to attend their Meetups. We didn't change anything about how Paypal works, and because we want to give organizers more options, we introduced a new payment option with Amazon Payments.
Organizers will have the option to require that members pay when they RSVP. (We've learned from organizers that charging members reduces no-shows).
Organizers will get to set their own refund policy, and members will be required to read and accept it when they RSVP.
Organizers and members will be able to view detailed transaction information. (Example of what an organizer will see).
And refunds will be super easy! Members can easily ask their organizers for refunds, and organizers will be able to give individual or bulk refunds with just one click.
Meetup is going global - Meetup is going to speak more languages...soon!
We're proud to announce that by the end of the summer, we will launch Meetup's first non-English version of the site, and it will be in Italian! We plan on adding more languages like Spanish, French and German in the future. Why Italian? Outside of the US, Canada and Great Britain, Italy has the highest number of Meetup Groups in the world.
This is a big project and we could use your help. If you are a native Italian, or have spent a considerable amount of time in Italy speaking the language and are fluent in both English and Italian, we could use your help proofreading and editing the professional translation. We've started a Meetup Group called "Help Translate Meetup.com into Italian" - if you can help, join it! Who better to help proofread and translate Meetup than the people who use it? Thanks in advance!
For Developers - the Meetup API
Meetup will provide an API to allow developers to use the Topics, Groups and Events hosted and created on Meetup.com in their own applications and mashups. A simple HTTP interface provides access to this data in several standard formats. Any Meetup organizer or member will be able to request an API key and start playing with the API. Meetup is committed to making the information at the core of the service widely available -- while of course respecting the privacy of our Meetup groups and members.
And more
And there is more: organizers will be able to set RSVP deadlines for their Meetups, everyone will be able to print a physical ticket with their Meetup information, and organizers will be able to ask their members questions when they RSVP.
Got feedback?
We hope you'll love these new features - we built them because so many of you asked for them! We run Meetup Groups too, and we're looking forward to using these features to help us help people get the most from every Meetup.
We see stories every day of Meetup Groups helping people in large and small ways. Keep it up! We're all making the world a better place by ensuring there's a Meetup Group there whenever people need one.
All of these changes are only a first step. We're always here working to make the site better. Input from our organizers and members inform every decision we make.
Stay tuned for the launch! (And please keep in mind that we are still working on everything, so you may see some minor cosmetic differences when we launch).
