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Meetup didn’t (want to) realize its customers were running events to make money. So they ignored all the calls for features like selling tickets and let Eventbrite eat their lunch in that space.

The non-commercial side of things - evergreen interest groups - got eaten by Facebook, who doesn’t need groups to make money, just to engage users.

Everyone too young to have anything to do with either Meetup or FB are in some private chat.

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for one i am glad they did. i have no interest in paid events. and even less in a rent-seeker who takes a cut from the event organizers. when i went to visit a place recently, i looked at eventbrite and meetup for interesting events. i eventually gave up looking at eventbrite because there was nothing of interest. all the interesting community events were on meetup. sure, there is demand for paid events, and eventbrite may be filling that niche. but i believe if meetup would have taken on that feature it would have ruined the ability to have community events there. i am not interested in running into people who are trying to sell me something everywhere i go.

Meetup's problem is that charging the people organising free events is a poor business to be in. Even if they're better than facebook, are they better by enough to be worth paying for?

Meetups shortcomings are just one of many reasons why we’re building embolt[1] as an organization-first platform.

Running a club with events on meetup is great only until you need your community to contribute to the growing cost of running a successful club. At that point, you are no longer their customer — your members are a commodity and they give you just enough to stick around but not enough to function in a sustainable way. We all know communities are basically revolving doors for burnout, lack of tools and support is a big reason.

[1] https://embolt.app — public launch coming later this year!

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