…it connects people who want to make friends the old fashioned way, in person and offline.
There is much earnest discussion and hand-wringing about the impact on society of online social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Are these virtual friendships taking over from real, flesh and blood relationships? Is there a whole generation of young people at risk of losing important skills required for real, face to face relationships?
If you despair about online social networks, then have a look at this one. It is called Meetup [www.meetup.com] and it’s a social networking site with an important difference: it connects people who want to make friends the old fashioned way, in person and offline.
The strapline for Meetup is “neighbours getting together to learn something, do something, share something…”
It works on the old tried and true formula for meeting people and establishing friendships – a combination of common interests and common location. When you go to the website, you enter your location – a town, city, region or postcode – and you choose a distance from that location (it orginated in the US so the distances are in miles).
The website will show you all the different social groups available for you to join in that area or you can search by category – things like ‘crafts and hobbies’, ‘games’, ‘food and drink’, ‘arts and culture’, ‘religion and beliefs’, ‘movements and politics’, ‘pets and animals’, ‘community and environment’, career and business’ and ‘dancing’, to name but a few.
Whether your passion is model trains/bushwalking/ folk music/writing poetry/playing badminton/competitive Scrabble/going to the movies/fixing up old cars or baking cakes, chances are there will be a group of like-minded people somewhere near you who you can ‘meetup’ with.
It works!
A friend of mine, divorced and in her early sixties, first alerted me to Meetups. Having successfully launched on a health and fitness drive, she was looking for a group of amateur cyclists she could join to go on weekend bike rides. She was thrilled to find a group close by and is now a confirmed member. She’s made several new friends too who she sees outside of the group.
Depending on your group, Meet-ups might be monthly, weekly or more frequent. Many groups have lots of small meetups; others, like my friend’s cycling group, have fortnightly rides but how often you go and how it evolves is naturally up to you.
If you’re checking it out, take the time to look around properly. Don’t look at the first pictures you might see and dismiss it as something for ‘young people’. There are lots of quirky interests and a diverse array of age-related groups too, including older age groups. And if your particular passion isn’t there, you can start your own Meetup group!
A mission for good
Meetup says its mission is “to revitalise local community and help people around the world self-organise. Meetup believes that people can change their personal world, or the whole world, by organising themselves into groups that are powerful enough to make a difference.”
It’s a reflection of the history of Meetup. It was inspired by the way that people in New York City – previously strangers – came together in the aftermath of the September 11 2001 terror attacks on the city. Co-founder of Meetup, Scott Heiferman said this inspired him to use the Internet to make it easier for people to connect with strangers in their community.
More than a decade on, Meetup is the world’s largest network of local groups. More than 9,000 groups get together in local communities each day, each one with the goal of improving themselves or their communities. According to its website, Meetup has 21.53 million members across 180 countries with a total of 199,736 groups.
It must be doing something right!
