RE: [UG-ADMINS] Next Gen UGs and Social Networks

> >   -- where does meetup.com fit in?  observed
> advantages/disadvantages?
> 
> Meetup.com is fine for non-techies to organize, but there are some
> fundamental problems:
> 
> 1. Price-point.
> For what you pay a month, you could get a decent webhost with some
> kind of panel and get the same functionality, with custom graphics.
>
> 2. Slow.
> 
> 3. Inflexible.
> Some of this has been corrected over time, but there are still a lot
> of brittle "this is how Meetup works" mis-features that can't be
> worked around.

Agreed on all points.  While they have some handy features, for tech related groups what they do have really isn't great.

> 4. Ghost-town
> There are a lot of meetup groups that look active, until you try to
> actually go to a meeting or interact with its members...
> Then you find out that it hasn't really existed for a year or so.

Yeah, I think this is the biggest one - there are so many fragmented, dis-organized and poorly run groups.  While this may be ok in some cases for non-techs, it doesn't cut for trying to build real communities online for techs.  Especially since techs have had online communities for many years - and meetup.com doesn't build on any prior lessons learned from running an online community.

I would only add perhaps a #5, which is related to the above as well... the quality of people generally roaming around meetup.com are lesser than those who would participate in a real user group of sorts.  Granted, I've met some great people on meetup.com, but generally this is the exception.

H