The Official Meetup HQ Blog

New Feature - Event Hosts

by Maya

Hi everyone,

Now Organizers and Assistant Organizers can make any group member a one-time Event Host!

Say you have a member who has stepped up and volunteered to organize a Meetup - plan the whole thing on your Meetup Group site as well as host the actual, in person Meetup event - but you don't want to make them an Assistant Organizer. You'll now be able to make that member an "Event Host," which will give them the ability to organize ONE Meetup event! But once the Meetup takes place their access goes away. Think of it as a temporary website "power."

If you have group members who want to help your run the group, this feature is for you and your Meetup Group!

We know that you guys have been asking for "co-organizers," the ability to assign "roles," etc - this is a first step to getting all of us there!

If you have feedback, please leave it here!

Thanks
Maya, Keith, Justin, Teresa and Davide.


Setting things up
Here is how you set them up, on the Meetup Event creation page. Note that as the Organizer (or Assistant Organizer), you'll first need to create the Meetup Event as either a draft or as a real Meetup on your calendar.


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What can Event Hosts do?
Event Hosts will be able to do anything Organizers and AOs can do as it pertains to the Meetup:
* edit the Meetup details
* change members' RSVPs
* email members if they need to (only as it pertains to the Meetup event)
* see members' answers to RSVP questions
* manage Waiting Lists
* and take attendance after the Meetup on Meetup.com!

Other stuff to know:
- You can leave "special instructions" to whomever you've chosen as the Event Host
- Event Hosts will not be able to Copy events
- Event Hosts will be notified of their special powers via email. If they visit the Meetup Group they'll see special editing powers for the Meetup Event they have access to.
- Each Meetup can only have one Event Host at a time for now.

Maya leads the Product Management team at Meetup.

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New Feature - Updates to the Printable RSVP List

by Maya

Hi everyone!

If you like to print out your RSVP list to check people in at your Meetups, your life just got a lot easier. We've made a bunch of updates to make that list more useful and easier to use:

- We changed the name of the link (from "Print summary" to "Print RSVPs") and moved it closer to the actual RSVP list (check under "Who's coming")

- You can now sort by member name or RSVP type!

- If you asked members questions when they RSVP, you can choose to show or hide those answers when you print.

- You can choose to hide photos and the Meetup description when you print.

- You can still see member comments and how many guests they're bringing.

(Click on the example below to make it bigger. Please note that for this Meetup, members were not asked to answer questions when they RSVP.)

Got feedback? Leave it here!

Thanks!

Maya leads the Product Management team at Meetup.

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New Features: New and Improved "Find a Meetup Group" Page

by Maya

Hi everyone,

Millions of people come to Meetup.com each month to find a local group to join. So we focused on making the experience of finding the right local Meetup Group easier and more engaging, while bubbling up some interesting data about Meetup.com and all the great 67,000+ Meetup Groups out there. The amount of super interesting stuff that happens on Meetup.com and within Meetup Groups is really impressive, and with this redesign we resolved to "stop hiding the good stuff."

So check it out. Here's what's new:
- The actual search experience works similarly. But, now you can search on just a topic (and see all the groups in that topic, irrespective of their location) or just a location (and see all the groups in that location). Or, you can try searching without entering a topic or a location... This makes it easier for people to find the right group for them.
- If we know anything about you - your location, Meetup Groups you've previously expressed interest in, etc - we'll recommend other Meetup Groups that might be interesting for you to join and point you to Meetups that are happening in your area.
- We're now displaying trending information - Fastest growing topics, Most popular topics, Fastest growing cities. We may play around with what we show here until we land on some interesting trends that help people find great groups while profiling as many great Meetup Groups as possible.
- And if you want to find a group by category or city, you can still do that, near the bottom of the page.

Check it out for yourself!
http://www.meetup.com...
...or see the screenshot below.

And if you've got feedback, leave it here!

Thanks
Maya

Maya leads the Product Management team at Meetup.

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New Feature: Members can post ideas for Meetups and vote on them!

by Maya

Coming up with ideas for Meetups isn't always easy, and sometimes it's good to get a little help from your members. A few months ago we launched the Suggest-A-Meetup feature, and now we've enhanced it. Here's what we changed:

• Ideas that members suggest will now be made public (unless, of course, it's in a private group). Organizers will continue to receive emails when an idea is posted.
• Group members can vote on the ideas they like and the votes will be tallied for all to see.
• Organizers and Assistant Organizers can turn any idea into a real Meetup event with the click of a button.
• Organizers, you can turn the feature off if you don't want to receive ideas from members (Just go to Group settings > Optional features > Meetup options > Ideas for Meetups)

Here is a sneak peek of what you see if you're an Organizer.


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Get started by following the link on your Meetup Group's homepage, in the box that contains details about your next Meetup.

Have fun! If you've got feedback, let us know.

Maya leads the Product Management team at Meetup.

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New Release - July 20, 2009 - PayPal Enhancements

by Maya

Hi everyone,

There are many benefits to charging your members to attend Meetups or to pay Meetup Group membership dues/donations, among them:
1. it can help with the costs of running your Meetup Group
2. members who pay (even the smallest) Meetup fees are much less likely to flake.

If you use PayPal to collect Meetup fees or Membership dues/donations, your life just got easier. Meetup HQ has made two big enhancements to how PayPal works on Meetup.com:
1. You can now require that members make a payment in order to RSVP for your Meetups.
2. All PayPal transactions will now automatically be recorded on your Meetup Group's website.



Read below for more details.

Thanks!
Maya


More details:

Require payment to RSVP
When you set up your next Meetup, go to the "Charging for this Meetup?" section, select the PayPal option, and then the "Require payment to RSVP" option.

PayPal transactions will be automatically recorded
- See member payment information and status in the Money section of your Meetup Group, and a roll up for all your groups in your Account section.
- If the member is paying Meetup Group Dues, you can see their payment information and status on their profile page and on your member list.
- If the member is paying Meetup Event Fees, you can see their payment information and status next to their name on each Meetup's RSVP page.
- Members can see their own payment status and payment information.
- Members cannot see each other's payment status or information.
- Refunds will need to be issued on PayPal.com, but refund information will be reflected on your Meetup Group.
- Amazon Payments users - you can continue to use Amazon Payments. The PayPal feature will work exactly like Amazon Payments with these exceptions: you'll need to issue refunds on PayPal.com, but all refund information will be reflected on your Meetup Group; no batch refunds.

And, both PayPal and Amazon Payments charge their own transaction fees. Meetup is not charging any additional transaction fees on top of this.

Got feedback?

Maya leads the Product Management team at Meetup.

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Weekly Release: March 31st, 2009

by Maya

Hi all,

This week we focused primarily on cleaning up some usability issues and bugs around last week's new photo page release.

Photo Fixes/Tweaks

• We are adding in a next/prev arrow w/ a counter (i.e. 4 of 36) above the photo
• We are adding a page which will show all albums in a grid view (if you have more than 5 albums in your group) to make it easier to navigate. You will be able to sort this page by create time or last activity time in the album.
• We added a link to "See all sizes" which allows you to easily access all sizes of the photo (original down to thumbnail)
• We fixed a handful of photo related bugs

We also of course fixed bugs relating to other areas of the site, including:

• Apostrophes are no longer showing up incorrectly in member quotes on group home
• Can now download member lists in very large groups
• Fixed grammatical error on upcoming events
• Fixed some translation-related bugs for the French language
• Board searches are no longer showing garbled characters
• If you've provided questions for your members to answer then they rsvp to an event, you will now see their photos when you look at their answers
• Members who email their organizers to request a refund can now cancel out of the email form
• Pay with Paypal link now works for new-style URLs
• The Money section now displays as pending any Amazon Payments refunds that are actually in a pending state
• Meetup feeds now work for groups with custom URLs
• Fixed a bug having to do with members who suggest events and then leave the group
• Streamlined help text on the dues setup page

Thanks!

Maya

 GOT FEEDBACK? WE BET YOU DO.... :)

Maya leads the Product Management team at Meetup.

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Weekly Release: February 24, 2009

by Maya

Hi folks,

On Tuesday of this week we launched the following...

Thanks,
Maya

Tell a Friend just got better
Know someone who would love your Meetup Group or another Meetup Group you know about? It's now easier than ever to encourage your friends to join. The Tell a Friend form is now easier to use and always there when you need it - there's a link in the footer and you'll see the form after you rate an event, just to name two places.

Customize your group's mailing list address
You can now customize your group's mailing list address and make your emails instantly recognizable to your members! Instead of having your mailing list emails come from a Meetup-generated subject line, you can now use a unique address that's more memorable and personal to your group. Go to Group Settings > "Optional Features" to get started or learn more.


Improvements to managing your group's topics
Members are more likely to find your group if your group is listed under the right topics. Now, it's a lot easier to select and manage your group's topics! When you're adding a new topic, we'll auto-complete them for you as you type. And, you can reorder them by dragging and dropping (changing how they appear on your group's homepage and in search results.) Get started by clicking on the Manage Topics link on group home, or Group Settings > Topics.


Bugs and other fixes:
* Fixed some copy-related bugs having to do with the "Create a New Group" experience
* Updated the form to contact Meetup Support
* For those groups that have an upcoming Meetup scheduled and who have no members, we no longer prompt the organizer to ask members for ideas for future Meetups.
* The Appearance and Sponsorships features are no longer "new," so we've taken down the "new" icons in Group Settings
* The first time you send a message to a mailing list is no longer a dead-end page
* Fixed bug having to do with refund policies not showing up on the refund page in IE6
* If you received payments as an organizer but are no longer an organizer, we now show you your "payments received" tab
* Fixed a bug with how the payment settings option on the meetup creation page looks against darker themes
* The page a member sees when contacting another member now is customized with their group's theme
* New topics - Presidential 2012; New topic add: Miniature Enthusiasts
* Changed wording that members see when rsvp'ing for paid meetups
* Fixed bug where the payment type was lost if there was another error while setting up a Meetup event
* Fixed bug with the display of the city/topic heatmap on the API demos page
* All member profile photos that show within the Money section now point to that member's group profile
* Fixed search results layout bug
* Copied Meetup events no longer copies over the event creator
* Export to a Calendar now posts the correct time in Google and Yahoo
* Assistant Organizers can now see custom titles of other AOs in the member list

 Got feedback? Leave it here!

Maya leads the Product Management team at Meetup.

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Weekly Release, January 28, 2009

by Maya

Hi everyone,

The team at HQ is busy at work on some exciting *new* features for you. Until those things are ready for prime time, we've been working hard on making some feature enhancements and fixing bugs.

Launching on Wednesday, January 28 is the following:

Feature enhancements:
* Customizing the appearance of a Meetup Group with themes is a great way to establish a group's personality, and now organizers will see the "customize your group" feature right when they Start a Meetup Group. So now new organizers (or those on their second or third groups :) will be able to immediately set the tone and personality of their group (s).
* If you charge your members dues or donations (or whatever you want to call them - cuz you can call them whatever you want, you know :), you can now add payment information right on the member list or right from that member's profile page.
* You can now set your default currency in Group Settings (Group Settings > Optional Features). Your currency preference will then get passed on when/if you set up Dues and when/if you set up paid Meetup events. What's so great about that, you ask? Well, it saves you a step, and it lays the foundation for some fun new stuff you'll hear about soon.
* And for our fellow developers, we’ve enhanced the Meetup API to now include a 'myrsvp' field as part of Events data to indicate members’ RSVP responses for events.


Bug fixes (and behind-the-scenes stuff, too):

* Meetup Badges for other web sites: Fixed the countdown date and accented characters.
* Fixed incorrect “spots left” number appearing on the Change RSVP page
* Fixed special characters sometimes throwing off keyword searching
* Fixed exporting to Calendar sometimes displaying the wrong time if the event is in a different time zone than your group.
* Fixed link on Organizer Checklist tip
* Fixed “Email members” email sometimes going to ex-group members if you target the email to people who attended a certain Meetup.
* Fixed RSVP questions sometimes being attributed to the wrong event Organizer
* Polls page: fixed the error if you don’t select anything.
* Fixed long message board posts sometimes causing errors
* Fixed IE7 layout issue relating to events using Amazon Payments

Thanks,
Maya

Got feedback? Share away...

Maya leads the Product Management team at Meetup.

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A look back to 2008...and here's to a great 2009!

by Maya

Two thousand eight was an exciting year for Meetup. The 1,000,000th Meetup took place, Meetup Groups increased their membership by 4 million, and your Meetups received almost 20,000,000 RSVPs, nearly doubling the number from the year before. Congratulations!

Meetup.com is THE best way to organize local community groups, and the people at Meetup HQ work hard to keep improving it for Organizers and members everywhere. This year we reached out and listened to Organizers and members more than ever to better understand how to improve Meetup, and to make sure the improvements we make are useful and make sense. To paraphrase Scott from an earlier post, we work better when we work with you.

So here is a sampling of what we did:

Usability testing

We started inviting people into Meetup HQ to watch them use existing and new features so we could figure out what was broken or what didn't work so well, and fix it.

Since July we have conducted 94 usability tests and we have no plans to slow down in 2009.

Launch Preview Group

We started the Launch Preview Group (open to any member of Meetup, just email the organizer to ask for the invitation code) to research people's needs, and to get feedback from people on new and existing features.

Since its inception we have asked for feedback on 14 separate features and conducted 2 previews, where members of the group got to try out new features before they're introduced to everyone. We are endlessly thankful for the awesome feedback from the people (our partners) who participate in this group.

Meetup Support

...fielded about 3,300 feature-related emails and phone calls, many of which influenced the improvements we made to Meetup and the new features we built.

Meetup Tour

Over the summer Meetup Staff traveled around the US and met face-to-face with about 300 organizers, talking with them about what we could do to improve and grow the Meetup experience.

These meetings were in addition to the dozens and dozens of Organizers we meet with regularly in the NYC area.

Listening to members and organizers proved to be the right move- what we learned from the efforts above informed and continue to inform the new features and products we build.

In no particular order, here is a brief review of what we built in 2008 – we think it was our best year yet:

No screenshots available for these four

• Meetup API
• Sponsorship payments to organizers & internal campaign management tools
• Meetup Alliance feed enhancements
• Meetup.com site redesign

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Meetup.com in Italian

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Meetup Places – find a place to hold your Meetup

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Charge members to attend your Meetups & keep track of all the payments for your Meetups

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Promote Your Meetup on Facebook

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More guidance setting up new groups

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Customize the appearance of your group

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Enhancements to collecting dues from members

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Member search

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“Sponsor our Meetup Group” – connecting organizers and sponsors

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Upgrades to message boards

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Waiting lists

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Customize your Meetup Group's web address

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Ability to track No Shows

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Blocking and banning members

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Meetup Alliance gadgets

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Improvements to searching, browsing and joining

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Top navigation streamline

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Home page redesign

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Unplug your friends

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We are committed to continue working with Organizers and members in 2009 to make it easier and easier for people to organize great local groups in their communities.

Thanks to you for making 2008 such a great year for Meetups everywhere. Speaking on behalf of everyone at Meetup HQ, we can't wait for 2009 to be even better!

Have a Happy New Year!

Got feedback? Please share your feedback here.

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Weekly Release for December 16, 2008

by Maya

Hi everyone,

This is our last release of 2008, and boy do we have some exciting stuff to tell you about!

Promote Your Meetup on Facebook!
We hear lots of Organizers looking for ways to promote their groups. Well, now whenever your members RSVP for a Meetup, they'll have the option to post their RSVP to their Facebook News Feeds for their friends to see!

Meetup is one of the first companies to use the new "Facebook Connect." Mention this to your members when you schedule your next Meetup to help drive new people to your Meetup Group! (Organizers won't automatically have this option since you're automatically RSVP'd for Meetups. For now, if you would like to post to your Facebook newsfeed, you can go back and "change your RSVP" to use it.)

New Group Set Up
We speak to Organizers every day, and we also do a lot of user testing here at Meetup HQ. We see/hear over and over, that new Organizers often struggle with what to do once they decide to start a new Meetup Group. To help our new Organizers, we're now stepping them through the most important elements of starting a Group and giving them additional guidance on their Group home page for what to do next.

So if you know someone who's thinking of starting a new Meetup Group, give them a nudge as there's now more help to guide them through!

Customize the Appearance of your Group
There are many ways you can make your Meetup Group memorable, creative and unique so it stands out to potential members. For example, you can create killer About Us pages, post Group photos, customize your Group's web address, etc. But, we've heard from many organizers that you want even more control and more ways to express and showcase your Group's personality and uniqueness.

So today, we're inviting members of our Preview Group to use a new feature before it's available to all Organizers on Meetup.com. You'll now be able to customize your Group's colors and fonts and upload a group banner and/or background image. You can choose from a variety of ready-made themes or create your own and really personalize your Group! This is a first step we're taking to really give you even more control over what your group looks like.

Example


This feature is not yet live to everyone - if you want to participate and share your feedback, please request to join the Preview Group and then read and reply to this message board thread.

Some site-wide visual improvements
- we saw in user testing that people were having trouble with the top site navigation (Home button, Find a Meetup group, Start a Meetup Group, etc), so we streamlined it
- to encourage people to upload a profile photo if they haven't yet, we tweaked the "no photo" icon

Bug fixes
Finally, as with every release, we have managed to squash a few bugs:

• Fixed bug where members were occasionally getting the Welcome to Meetup email multiple times
• In message boards, fixed it so that "latest reply" no longer acts wonky
• Now masking email addresses to non-members on group home and in the member profile
• Added some new topics and edited descriptions and keywords for some existing ones
• Fixed bug with "ask your members questions when they RSVP" not showing the event organizer's name
• Fixed time zone problems for upcoming Meetup events on search results pages
• Removed Google ads from Payments Received section in Account section
• Removed scroll bar appearing for custom profile questions on group settings

Got feedback? Share it here.

Thanks!

Everyone at Meetup HQ

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