Meetup HQ Blog

from all the boys and ghouls from Meetup HQ!

While we tabulate results from the annual Halloween Costume contest, I'd like to give a shout out to the team that won over the crowd as 'best ensemble' (in more ways than one):

That's Antonio as "the van", GaryH as Hannibal Smith, WillH as Faceman Jesse Richards as Murdock and Simon as the one and only B.A. Baracus (or Mr. T). 

What makes this ensemble so special?  These are also the folks behind the design and development of Meetup Alliance: the A-Team of Meetup product design and development. 

Minus the bad attitude, of course. 

As many of you know, Meetup Alliance is a great new service for groups to interact with each other on a larger scale than a single local Meetup Group. Meetup Alliance has been in Beta mode at www.meetupalliance.com. It was built as a separate site in order to fully test Alliance, but now we're taking steps to fully integrate Alliance with Meetup.com.

• If you have an Alliance account, it will merge into your Meetup.com account, if you have one (or we'll automatically create one for you.)
• You will now be able to use your Meetup.com email address and password to access Meetup Alliance. Logging into Meetup Alliance will automatically log you into Meetup.com.
• Only Meetup Group Organizers (or Assistant Organizers) will now be able to add a Meetup Group to an Alliance. If you have a Meetup Group in an Alliance that you do not run, we will contact you and the Meetup Group Organizer with the option to transfer the group.
• As many of you have requested, you can now join as many groups to an Alliance as you like! If you've created multiple Alliance accounts to circumvent the old limitation, please contact "support-at-meetupalliance.com" and we'll merge your accounts for you.
• Meetup Alliance will now use the Meetup.com Account settings and Profile. You will be able to view any Alliance member's Meetup.com profile.

This integration will not affect the ability to add non-Meetup Groups to Alliances. Thanks for helping us with this transition!

We've got a lot of exciting changes happening in the coming months!

MeetupAlliance.com is going to be fully integrating with Meetup.com in order to make everything work more smoothly and quickly, offer more features, and open up Alliance to many more people. We're hard at work on the first stage of this now.

What are some of the advantages for people in Alliances?

• You will be able to use the same email address and password for Meetup.com and MeetupAlliance.com. Logging into one will automatically log you into the other.
• You will be able to join as many groups as you like to an Alliance. (You are currently limited to one per person.)
• When you join a Meetup Group to an Alliance, you won't have to type all the information in, but rather just choose the group from a list of your groups - Alliance will already know all about it.
• We will also automatically use your group photo and group description from your Meetup Group. (Which means, unfortunately, if you typed something different for your group description for Alliance, this might get cleared out.)
• Your account information will now live on the Meetup.com site, all in one place.
• Because everyone will have a Meetup profile, you will be able to contact Alliance Organizers and members, just like on Meetup. (Including all privacy options.)

We also heard from you that you want an easy way to invite Meetup Groups to your Alliance. This is the most common request we've received, and the Meetup.com integration will allow us to build this invitation tool soon.

Please note that these changes will not affect the ability to add non-Meetup groups to Alliances, which you will always be able to do.

The first stage of this transition will be launching in the coming weeks. Please share your thoughts or questions below and let us know what you think!

- Jesse