alt Hacker NewsConsidering what Bending Spoons did to Meetup.com after buying the site, I wouldn't trust them to improve a product. Here are some of the issues I noticed.
- Group searches consistently return irrelevant results across multiple cities. As a test, I tried searching for soccer groups in Dallas, Texas, and one of the results was for a backgammon group. Users will also often have a hard time finding events I host on Meetup. - An organizer being charged $357.98 per year to host a group on Meetup.com. - The pages for my Meetup events are full of clutter and duplicate data, while relevant information such as RSVPs is hidden. - My Meetup.com home page is full of pointless distractions, including a banner asking me to become an organizer when I already organize events. - When editing an event, Meetup shows an option to generate a description by using generative AI. Generative AI is a scam and I try to avoid it.
That being said, you are right that they are becoming more expensive and ship features faster. I describe Bending Spoons as Italian private equity.
As a heavy Meetup user, I can say that Bending Spoons absolutely fixed some glaring, long-standing bugs. But their massive price increases have really driven people away, and some of their attempts to grab more money (Meetup+) really rankled a lot of people. Also, search still sucks.