>"I disagree - I believe people have an intimate enough relationship with certain meetup groups that they work as a micro-social network. To that end, it would make logical sense to have an independent application for those groups."

But what does that do for meetup.com, except cut themselves off completely from the very communities they're trying to foster?

>"to leverage the additional app store SEO boost from having thousands of unique titles."

You only get the "SEO boost" if people are actually looking for terms on a search engine. You're still assuming that people are actually looking for local interest group on the app store. I really don't think so.

If anyone were serious about it, one could run a quick survey and ask where users would search if they wanted to find a local group to talk about shared interests. I'd be surprised if more than 1 in 500 said anything like "app store".

>" still don't doubt that it will greatly increase raw traffic numbers"

I feel like a jerk, now, and I don't mean to be, but I also have to disagree here. I don't see how cutting Meetup out of the equation amounts to more traffic for Meetup.com.