Learn About the Upcoming Changes to Meetup

As I mentioned to some of you before our last ride, there are lots of changes coming to Meetup in 2024. Have you've noticed some funky behavior with the Meetup app or on the Meetup website? Some members have reported being unable to sign up for an event, while others have had trouble seeing the attendee and/or wait lists. For many members, a pop-up window urging you to subscribe to Meetup Plus has appeared after clicking on an event's 'Attend' button. The Grand Poobah will explain what's happening and allay all fears that perhaps you, your phone, and your computer are simply going wacky.

Meetup was acquired by an Italian company called Bending Spoons earlier this year. You can read about their general plans for Meetup on the official Meetup Blog website, but I'll give you a quick rundown here. The first priority is to fix the MANY bugs in the platform that have occurred over the years as Meetup was bought and sold several times. Most of the U.S.-based programming operation is gone, and the main programming team will now be based in Europe. The new team is working to streamline the old code base while improving the overall reliability of the platform. New features will be added, too. Sounds great, right? It is for the most part, but just understand that the new Meetup owners also want to make M-O-N-E-Y. There will be a continuing push for everyone to become paying members by subscribing to Meetup+. (Be sure to click the link to read up on this!)

The Grand Poobah's take: The Meetup marketing team is spinning the Meetup+ option as some sort of upgrade, but, in reality, it's simply now charging members for the functionality that was always free in years past. So, is the free ride over for most of us? Well, yes and no. You can continue as a non-paying member, however, you will lose some of the things that you've become accustom to having. Viewing the attendee and wait lists, for example. Meetup+ members will also get priority event notifications. They'll get first dibs on events because they will hear about them before the free members. Other Meetup+ membership benefits include some custom icon nonsense, but I'll let you read about that yourself. And, last but not least, Meetup is moving to an ad-supported model on both the phone app and the website interface. In short, if you're a non-paying member, you can expect to see ads in the future. How intrusive these will be, I cannot say. If you have downloaded any free apps to your phone or used the Weather Channel on your computer, you know how this works.

Organizers will also be facing changes in 2024, starting off with a price increase at our next billing cycle (July 31). Whatever else Bending Spoons has in store for organizers, I do not know, but I can tell you this: Membership in North Shore Bicycling for Fun will continue to be free. We have a flat-rate Meetup plan, meaning that the group organizer (me) is not charged on a fee schedule based on the number or members in the group. I have not heard any rumors that this is going to change under the new ownership. Anyone who has been on Meetup for any length of time undoubtedly knows that a group's member list and the REAL list of active members are two totally different things.

Let's Talk About This
Got questions? Just want to vent? I've turned on the event chat feature, so we can all get these changes straight. Please post your questions or comments in the chat window, as it's more conducive to conversations than the general comment area on the event description page.

Click the 'Attend' button for the event so I can get an idea of how many of you are now up to speed on these Meetup changes.