About Movie

How Meetup started

Meetup is social networking website that helps its users to arrange meetings locally. The meetings that are arranged are ranged from topics such as movies, health, pets, politics and other interests.

Meetup.com was founded by Scott Heiferman, Matt Mekker, and Peter Kamali on June, 2002. Inspiration came from the book "Bowling Alone"- which explains the decline in neighborhood relations in US.

During 2002 to 2003, this website was one of worlds fastest growing social networking website. Mainly politicians has used it to organize meetings and has been heavily used by political campaigns in US and gained popularity during 2004 and most users registering at it signed for Dean in 2004, Clark in 2004 and Kerry in 2004.

This website announced that it would collect charges from local Organizers from August, 2005.

Meetup development:

Interests and groups on this website has been increasing from its start and the real push for it came during the 2003 political campaign when Democratic Presidential nomination started to use to conduct their grass root movement. Meetup.com revenue came from monthly subscriptions paid by local organizers. From August, 2005 this website announced to collect charges from local organizers.

During March, 2005 members reached 1,595,165 members registered with it (according to official website). It also has 194,472 local groups covering 5,454 different topics. Meetup removed local groups without paying organizers and also groups which has less than 5 or less members. It reported having 1,643,652 members, 5,484 topics and 99,731 local groups during July, 2005. The Meetup official website reveals that it has 5.7 million members, 8,340 different topics and 58,936 groups as on September, 2009.

Current usage:

Meetup is currently used to organize meetings with people locally. It is a form of real social networking where people meet. This website has different groups which grown to more than 2000 in number and thus makes easy to organize a local group or join one of existing group to meet face to face.

Members can start their own group and people from that area will join and meet them. Members need to enter their US zip code and for other countries, the city they live and the topic they are interested.

Members can choose from existing topics and it has presently 8,340 listed. You need to join a group and there are around 66,725 as on September, 2009. You can browse groups by a topic you interest and also search.

The groups are organized by an Organizer or Assistant Organizer and are called "Meetup Events" or "Meetups". When a Event has been scheduled, the members of the group has the right to tell whether they attend or not. The group members respond by selecting "Yes", "No" or "Maybe". Meetup does not charge for signing up or attending a Meetup or joining a group. It charges the organizer of the group.

User benefits:

The Meetup website differs from other social networking websites as it allows its users to meet face to face. The user can form into groups locally and meet regularly.

The following are some of the benefits of using Meetup.com:

1. Find other people locally who have similar interests as you.
2. You can get involved in local meetups (meetings organized) organized in your area.
3. By attending the meetups you can learn, teach and share knowledge.
4. Through meetups you can get new friends in your locality.
5. You can be proud to be part of community that is local or international.
6. Companies can promote their product/service by organizing meetups locally.
7. You can organize different campaigns in your locality this is proven by political campaigns successfully organized.

To join and participate in Meetup.com website, you need to register. Registering at this website requires you to provide the following: your real name,password, email id, country and city.

After you register search for topic or interest near a place you like to attend. If there exists no group on your interest near your place you can start your own.

The member who owns/start a group is called "Meetup Organizer" and charges for the organizer of a group as in following plans:

1. $12 per month for a period of 6 months.
2. $15 per month for a period of 3 months.
3. $19 per month.

You can join this website for free and you can also join group without any fees. Some group organizers may charge its members for attending an event. These costs may involve room rentals, prizes cost, and others.

The Organizer plans when and where to schedule a meeting. The members of that group may RSVP to its organizer by telling whether they attend that meeting or not by "Yes" or "No" or "May Be". The schedule of group appears in the Group's calender.

Worldwide usage:

According to Alexa.com, meetup.com was used extensively in United States forming 78%, United Kingdom forms 4% of users and the rest from Canada, India and Australia.

Meetup official website reveals that it has 5.7 million members and it organized 179,000 monthly meetups around 11,507 cities in the world.