More minor coolness
OK, this is even more trivial than the last post and pretty ephemeral to boot. The home page for Meetup.com’s Urban Exploration Meetups headlined their snippets of news and views from the nation’s - and world’s, I guess - Meetup groups with my comment on the Discover Albuquerque group:
Victor Milán says: “I’m glad I joined! I hope we can get more expeditions into unusual and out of the way places going.”
OK. It’ll probably be gone by the time you click over should you happen to bother, which I certainly don’t expect (there won’t be a test … this time.) It’s not that big a deal; it’s not as if seeing myself quoted online is a total novelty. I just got a kick out of it.
I’ve been meaning to post about Meetup.com. A friend of mine told me about it at the 4th of July party. It’s a clearinghouse for people to meet other people with similar interests. Through it are organized various activities and get-togethers. A week ago I did the Old Town Ghost Tour through Discover Albuquerque, and it was a blast. The various Meetups offer everything from dances to coffees to concerts to political rallies (the Ron Paul people are really working it.) Group topics cover a wide range, and I suspect there’s a way to propose new ones if your particular fetish interest isn’t yet listed.
Not everybody’s in my situation: shy by nature (yes, I am) and self-employed. I’ve been way too reclusive, and hoping for a way to meet more people. This would appear to be a godsend for me.
Even if you’re not in danger of staying home alone all the time ’til you turn into a cheese, you might check it out. It seems to be a pretty cool idea. It will get better as more and more people become aware of it and sign on.
And, oh - I’m not the only registered Sense of Adventure member to belong to Meetup.com.
July 23rd, 2007 at 3:06 am
Meetup.com is OK, if you don’t mind passing the hat for the 12 Federal Reserve Notes [FRN] per month that the people at meetup.com charge (for six months — it’s 19 FRN per month if you pay month-by-month) — anything you can do at meetup.com, you can do on Myspace, Yahoo, Facebook, etc., for no charge.
July 23rd, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Indeed. That could change my perspective.
However, there’s been no mention of any charges so far, and no credit card or other payment info has been collected. We shall see.
Still, 12 funnybux a month isn’t terrible for the value. Do they have the equivalent of Meetup groups on MySpace? I thought it was for dizzy teens and retarded single sleezoids to flaunt their insecurities to the world (and passé to boot.) But then I’ve little experience with any other social sites than Meetup.
July 26th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
Meetup.com won’t send you the bill — whoever volunteers to be the organizer pays that — meetup.com doesn’t charge per member but per group — if a group has enough members, the organizer can pass the hat once or twice a year and be done with it.
As for other outfits offering similar services at no charge, Myspace and Yahoo are the easiest to get around in, and have the most members. The rest —
* OKCupid is OK — easy to work with for the most part — just that they don’t let you post links as links — they’ll let you post URLs and email addresses as plain text only.
* I haven’t had much chance to play around with Tribe.
* Craigslist can get a little hairy at times.
* Google needs a bit of work before it becomes worth the trouble. Had some headaches with “Googlegroups.”
* Facebook is based around “networks” (regional/educational/workplace) — plus their page layout is a little weird.
And for some others —
* The “FriendFinder” outfits (adultfriendfinder, alt.com, friendfinder.com — they have a few) don’t let you post URLs or personal contact information on your profile or blog there, plus they require that you pony up some cash before looking at anyone else’s profile.
* Match.com requires that you pay before you can read any messages sent to you by other members. But they have Dr. Phil on retainer to some degree.