A Conversation With One of the Founders of Groupspaces (Watch Out, Meetup!)
I received an email from David Langer, one of the co-founders of Meetup competitor Groupspaces.com, the other day. In the wake of the exodus from Meetup.com after their almost universally-despised upgrade, he wanted my advice on what sorts of features former Meetup organizers wanted, so that they could improve Groupspaces and make it more appealing and useful. I had a nice informal chat with him this morning, and he was eager to get the word out that his company is committed to offering a groups service that really works for its members.
A little bit of background on David: He and his co-founder met at Oxford, where they were running student groups and needed a platform to help them organize events. Groupspaces was born out of that need, and he says they feel “passionately” about helping people manage their groups. It comes from a personal space of having done this themselves, which informs and drives what they do on the site.
Does this mean that Groupspaces may be a bit more responsive to their group organizers than Meetup? So far, the answer appears to be yes. Of course, this Meetup upgrade fiasco is a business opportunity for competitors, so if you are cynical, you might think Groupspaces responsiveness is all a bunch of PR. But considering that the leadership at “Meetup HQ” (as they are called by organizers) has been strangely silent about their upgrade and the backlash, I’d bet that most former Meetup organizers simply want a company that responds to their concerns – whether it’s just to make money or get PR or whatnot. But a company that responds! There’s nothing more frustrating than giving money to a company that is tone deaf and does not care.
My impression is that David does care and he is a very sharp guy who is really on top of what is going on. He has a vision of Groupspaces being a place where groups can connect worldwide, and that this goes beyond just one specific type of group. From what he told me, he sees Groupspaces as a hub where small local groups as well as large organizations can connect.
Groupspaces is already a great service, and it doesn’t hurt that it’s free for groups with fewer than 250 members. But of course, for people who were happy with Meetup’s old interface, Groupspaces has a few major areas they might improve. Groupspaces is aware of this and working overtime right now to add new features to the website. I might have misheard David what with the international call and his British accent, but I could have sworn he said his developers were right now in “Hackistan” to get things done quickly! (Update: David has since emailed me to clarify that he actually said they were in “Hackathon-mode” – though I kind of like the idea of a “Hackistan. 
)
I’ve noticed that several issues come up fairly consistently with Meetup organizers who are contemplating a transition to Groupspaces, so I shared a few of these concerns with David.
Number one is the issue of a local group search function. Especially for someone with a young Meetup that is not connecting to an existing organization, having new ready-made “eyeballs” is a very important feature. So the good news is: If you would like this functionality at Groupspaces, they are working on it!
Related to this issue is the concern over whether Groupspaces has enough “critical mass” to attract members to the site. David told me that they currently have about one million memberships, and they are doubling their userbase approximately every 4-5 months. They launched about five years after Meetup, so they do have a little catch up to do. But given the exodus from Meetup, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Groupspaces become a go-to site in the near future, provided they make it easier to find groups.
The second issue is the ability to have a photo gallery. David told me that just today one of their developers showed off a prototype photo gallery. David says this is the #3 most requested feature so you should expect to see this launched on the site soon, once it’s been tested.
On RSVPs and waiting lists: I let him know that Meetup organizers would like waiting lists, and that a few seemed to miss the “Maybe” RSVP option that Meetup used to have. David told me that they already have a “Maybe” option, and some of their organizers have requested the removal of “Maybe,” so there was some discussion over making “Maybe” optional. Mostly, I think with these sorts of issues, if you let Groupspaces know your concern, they will be responsive if enough people request something.
On site design: We also talked a bit about the how some organizers would like a more colorful Meetup style site design. While Groupspaces does offer a lot of page customization, I felt that a lot of people just checking the site out don’t understand that upon first glance. If you are expecting Meetup’s colorful templates, you won’t see that when you first join Groupspaces. But as we discussed on the phone, some folks might enjoy Groupspaces more “Google” style minimal starter design, and you can’t please everyone when it comes to graphics. This is not something that might initially be overhauled, but I did let David know it might be helpful in the least to provide some sample sites with different looks to let people know what they can do with the platform. Groupspaces is highly customizable, and you can do a lot with it already design-wise.
On Meetup’s “immaturity”: I take it from David’s personal timeline that he’s a fairly young guy himself, and I made a faux pas of commenting that some folks felt that Meetup was run by “20somethings.” He did remind me that 20somethings also created Yahoo and Facebook – oops, he’s probably a 20something – and so we discussed the “immature” way it appeared Meetup was being run. I told him about the new Meetup “welcome” email text that has many organizers in an uproar, which emphatically tells users in MTV language that they are “expected” to do certain things, such as suggest Meetups and share photos, and that they should not be “flakes.” (One Meetup organizer described this message as being “Hard-coded by a semi-literate sociopathic coder.”) I can tell that David is fairly mature, no matter what his age, so I doubt you’ll be seeing such juvenile language on Groupspaces any time soon.
And the big one – Meetup’s lack of concern: It seems clear to me that Groupspaces is much more eager to respond to what their customers want than Meetup at this time. I don’t know whether this is by design or not, but it is very odd that Meetup HQ is not trying to work with their organizers more. Some are speculating that Meetup wants to go to a corporate “perks” model and phase out organizers altogether, except to be the pawn of the corporate sponsors. I’m not sure what this means, but it seems to be sort of a company flashmob buzz model that the Meetup conspiracy theorists are talking about.
Meetup CEO Scott Heiferman did finally post a response to all the brouhaha today, but it’s probably too little too late. He allowed too much time and now Meetup organizers have spent an entire weekend researching and testing out alternatives. You have to move fast on the Internet. He also tried to diminish the upset organizers by claiming that “less than 2% of Organizers have posted here.” Ahhh…Scott, you do understand the old Internet adage that there are 10 lurkers for every one poster? So there are probably 10 disgruntled organizers for every one posting there.
Groupspaces has the jump on Meetup in all this. The very fact that one of the founders of Groupspaces contacted me at all is a far cry from Meetup and their days of silence. But Groupspaces appears to have a philosophy of putting the needs of the users first.
David told me very emphatically: “All product development is driven by the users.” He said they had a very large spreadsheet where they organize all the priorities for improving the site. These priorities are determined by the feedback they get from their customers. He wanted me to let people know that if anyone had any concerns, issues, or requests, that they should get in touch with the company. He said they are “very passionate” about responding to their customers’ needs.
One thing that you’ll be seeing soon on Groupspaces is a special new pricing plan that is being designed specifically for ex-Meetup organizers. I don’t know the specifics, but it’s designed to offer an affordable option for large groups that might want the ability to turn off advertising on their group pages, because Meetup users are used to not having ads.
For those who really like Groupspaces “free” account level – not to fear, this is not going away any time soon. “We feel very strongly about a free plan for local groups,” David told me.
Overall, I am very impressed with David’s attitude and felt confident after speaking to him that Groupspaces was committed to helping local organizers do what they do best – organize groups. It also seems that their platform is designed for larger and even non-local groups as well. With a user-focused commitment and an obvious eagerness to step up to the plate, I think Meetup is going to have a run for their money with Groupspaces.
Now I can only hope that Groupspaces doesn’t get bought out by Google or something. I’m so sick of Google owning everything. But that’s another story.
Tags: Groupspaces.com, Meetup.com
I spoke with him today, as well. I previously disregarded GroupSpaces as an alternative, largely due to the fact that for a group of my size that wanted an ad-free space linked to its’ own domain, it would be between $50-$60 per month, compared to Meetup’s $150 per year. I also disliked the rather drab, Google-looking interface that GroupSpaces seems to have going for it. I’m very impressed that they’re looking to address these issues so quickly, and they’re also working on a number of other features that will create a workable alternative to Meetup for many organizers.
I was a paying member of meetup.com and then they banned me after a SINGLE posting saying I was not happy and I was going to not setup another meetup event until they reverted to the old meetup. My right as a customer but I was banned for that – and not even given a warning.
In the very early days they were banning people left-right and center but they soon realized it didn’t stop the flood of messages to their forums. To be clear, I didn’t violate any of their establish ground rules or use any foul language. No warnings – and I am a PAYING meetup member of several years. I give them $144 a year (or used to).
It’s easy enough to bypass their ban though (with an alternative IP) so I came back under the name Publius since my main profile was banned.
I wrote my theory as to what they were planning on this forum thread:
http://www.meetup.com/boards/thread/10371379/0/
They deleted it and someone copied it here before they did:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/meetup-inc-new-york-2#hrid:JJKwAqYOvomQIFpdpwyy0w
They have since banned Publius and deleted the account entirely as well as all postings that Publius has ever made. Andrea came back and basically replied with “No, we love organizers” but failed to address a single point in my theory where I connected the obvious dots. They have major plans for meetup and it doesn’t involve organizers anymore (at least the way we think of them).
Meetup has no regard for their customers and I feel so welcome GroupSpaces.com home.
Like Publius, I was banned from the Meetup forums for posting a compilation of contact information, which Meetup has done their best to conceal. My first thread was simply locked and quickly fell into oblivion; my later postings were deleted entirely.
This happened over the weekend, and was most likely the work of Andrea, one of the few Meetup staff who were even slightly active in the wake of their overwhelmingly amateurish redesign. Andrea has made a number of comments on a variety of threads, most of which come across as cold, arrogant, indifferent and entirely unapologetic.
I have heard from other people who appreciated my posts and who, like Publius, were also banned for complaining. Andrea later claimed that any talk of dissenters being banned was only rumor–but as many of us can attest, this is absolutely not true. Much of what Andrea writes is transparent corporate spin; most of her responses tend to skirt issues, ignore complaints and shrug off the most pivotal concerns. Presumably she is only doing her job, but she writes with such arrogant condescension that she only antagonizes her audience–who are paying members of the Meetup community.
Many of the thousands of angry voices on Meetup simply want, first and foremost, an acknowledgment that HQ made a serious blunder by not giving its members a detailed preview of the planned changes and an opportunity to comment on them. A simple apology would have made a tremendous difference; it is an adult response to a mistake, and costs nothing but a little pride, but clearly this is too great a price for HQ to pay.
I sent an email to Groupspaces generic ‘help’ address, twitter message to @groupspaces and the founder and email a tech guy at groupspaces asking different things. Though they have a much smaller team than meetup, I got a response from ALL of them within 1 or 2 days.
This is the kind of service I like to see. There are things GroupSpaces can improve but at least I know they will improve.
I like the customer interface with this company, and as a Meetup Organizer of over 600 members, I’d love to give them my money. They’ll have to make improvements in event management and member roles before I can consider going over. Either way, I wish them the best of luck with the business opportunity that Meetup dropped on their lap.
I became involved with meetup long before there were organizers, and have been a paying organizer since 2006. I fully intend on migrating all 3 of the groups I currently organize (almost 1000 members in total) to Groupspaces over the course of the next 6 months. I had just paid dues in January, so my membership is paid through July, but that will allow me time to get to know the Groupspaces platform, test out the features, etc. before making the ‘big switch’. I have always been a huge cheerleader for meetup, but this latest ‘upgrade’ is inexcusable in my mind. Thanks for sharing your information–I look forward to seeing the changes that Groupspaces will be making to improve the usability for all of us meetup ex-pats.
I thought I’d share my story of what happened to me with meetup:
http://meetupbannedme.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/the-revenge-of-publius-the-real-motivation-behind-new-meetup/
Great article GreenTechGirl. Nice interview. I’m moving to them – they seem awesome. They don’t have it all yet but clearly they want to work with us rather than shoving their vision down our throats even when we don’t want it.
Tried to post before but I think it didn’t get saved… oh well…
I will definitely be moving to GroupSpaces.com. I’m shocked by the childish behaviour or meetup.com. They really don’t care what their customers think.
Here’s my story with meetup.com and their pathetic change:
http://meetupbannedme.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/the-revenge-of-publius-the-real-motivation-behind-new-meetup/
Great to hear this. Thanks for the informative coverage of the Meetup debacle from a soon-to-be former Meetup organizer!
Great article!
I will certainly be moving over to groupspaces within the next few months (my meetup account is paid through April).
I have played around with groupspaces & there are a few features that I don’t see, that I absolutely will need to run my group:
*The ability to save locations & recall them when creating events
*RSVP caps & an automatically managed waiting list
*The ability to ‘sticky’ or pin messages to the top of the message board
I am confident that when we make the switch we will be headed to groupspaces
Two “me too’s”
1. I was banned from posting on Meetup fora because I wrote something someone didn’t like — I re-read every post I’d made and for the life of me STILL don’t know what I did “wrong.” I was also NOT “warned” for inappropriate posting, I was just summarily dropped.
2. Given how incredibly busy the small staff at GroupSpaces must be right now, I was hugely impressed upon receipt of a personal, very clear answer to two questions I asked of their tech-support team. An answer that came back to me within 26 hours — on the weekend!
[...] or gleeful in the least; just fantastically helpful. The result? A huge influx of sign-ups and a major PR victory against a rival. It was a masterclass in clever [...]
“Too little too late” is right. Meetup needs some competition. Their company was built on the backs of their organizers, and it’s time we lent our backs to elevate a company that will treat us with respect.
With today’s apology and list of (minor) concessions, Meetup is beginning to act like a company dependent on its paying customers… but only because this time (there have been other past “organizer revolts” over the same types of issues) there’s competition, and a lot of us are canceling our renewal payments.
As for the supposed lesser customization of this site, I have found the opposite to be true when setting up both of the groups I organize. True, you can’t put wallpaper with daisies and purple camels all over your group. But the colors are as customizable, and you can determine the layout of the pages… something you can’t do on Meetup. And the Co-Org of one of my groups found a way to put a video on our Home page, as we previously could on Meetup. Plus we can put RSS feeds all over the place and I don’t know what all; we need to spend some more time exploring the site.
Groupspaces.com is fast becoming the “healthy” alternative to the arrogance of Meetup.com. Thank you Groupspaces!
[...] or gleeful in the least; just fantastically helpful. The result? A huge influx of sign-ups and a major PR victory against a rival. It was a masterclass in clever [...]
I will never use groupspaces. I had horrible experience with them. I would not like to move from not supportive platform to others. Some of their features are clucky and not thought out at all. Some of students community and local groups leads think the same.
I have heard that they are few other good startups which are trying to addressing similar market as groupspaces and meetup and doing it in much better way.
If somebody has the details please post.
Last March (2010) Meetup deleted my account. I had been banned from posting on the organisers board for almost a year by then. It made me do what I always knew inside that I should do. The group is now on its own platform untied to any corporate entity. Had groupspaces been one of the many options I investigated back then, and had it been as responsive as it now obviously is, I would not have bothered putting in the time to develop the group’s own platform. I am not about to put the group on groupspaces for many reasons. But If I could have the chance to do it again, I think I would now have a groupspaces based group.
MUHQ (rhymes with muck) are an arrogant, self opinionated clique. I ran an extremely successful group there for four years, taking the trouble to offer serious and reasonable suggestions, even volunteering to be part of a “beta test” group, and using my own group members to test new features before release. However, in their infinite wisdom they chose to implement features the beta testers warned were seriously flawed. They only wanted to hear praise for what they were about to release. It was not beta testing at all. It was demoralising to watch the rest of meetup then get subjected to the repeated disasters of unworkable, buggy, and plain broken “new features” that were hailed as reviewed by the beta test group. Never did they use a test-fix-retest method it was look, isn’t this great? What do you mean NO! We like it so you get it whether you like it or not, and so does everyone else.
I was asked by former meetup organisers for my opinion of groupspaces, because unlike MUHQ, they could contact me 24/7. My verdict is that they listen and understand your questions. They do not reply with copy’n'paste corporate replies, and they do so in a reasonable time. If the platform isn’t perfect, give them the benefit of the doubt and they are doing their best to respond to your needs. Unlike meetup, the mayhem in the groupspaces offices at the moment is them working franticly responding to your needs, not you clamouring for a response about something they broke. The mayhem in meetup’s office is a secret project social experiment where you, the lab mice, pay the bills.
Len