I'll keep doing my thing for a while.

It is nice to know that this is still read by some hardcore folks. I was wondering if I was in an echo chamber.

I hope that someone else will do stats for crossing checking purposes.

I do it out of simple curiosity. It helps me keep programming and other such skills going.

Some obsevations based on what I am seeing.

First of all the stats are not the end all and be all. Success for Meetup or the groups are by individuals doing things. These stats will not inspire folks. They will not provide insights in people or group management. They will not satisify anyone looking for the demise of Meetup nor do they provide encouragment for anyone wanting to make a quick buck off of a meetup stock investment(if such was available).

However, they do provide an integerty check on 'management speak' and an indication to laity if the Meeup business plan is working.

The stats will be very dull, until the Meetup managment makes significant changes. Like it or not, there number of meetup groups will decline very slightly until such time as these changes happen.( I am clueless on advice. and this is not a reflection on the quailty of managment, just the challanges they have) . This is simply because the 20 or so groups that open on a 'average' day are not sufficent to offset the closures of groups in the 8 thousand or so already existing groups on that same 'average' day. But the difference is not significant.

'Free' groups do not help. As noted elsewhere where was a 'loop hole' where until 12/1/2005, folks could start a groups at no cost. The number of groups that survived 6 weeks under the loophole was almost less than 15%(based on eyeball observation). When folks had to invest up front, the 6 week survival rate was over 85%-almost a mirror image.

I've started tracking active membership in groups and if there is a significant trend, then that is one to watch. That is, instead of 'marginal' groups with few actives and lots of inactives, the trend is to fewer groups but with more active memberships. This may be evidence that the organizer support is starting to show results.








BTW if anyone knows of a job in Bham Al, with this kind of skill set, kindly drop me a line.

Like it or not, there number of meetup groups will decline very slightly until such time as these changes happen.( I am clueless on advice. and this is not a reflection on the quailty of managment, just the challanges they have) . This is simply because the 20 or so groups that open on a 'average' day are not sufficent to offset the closures of groups in the 8 thousand or so already existing groups on that same 'average' day.

Um, actually, the number of groups we "net" each individual day has usually been positive for months now.

And for the month of January it's been netting in the positive double digits almost every single day.

And a substantial number of the groups we've "lost" have been moribund groups "run" by absentee Organizers... so the number of groups "worth joining" frequently goes up even when we don't net any new groups for the day.

:)

Walter

Like it or not, there number of meetup groups will decline very slightly until such time as these changes happen.( I am clueless on advice. and this is not a reflection on the quailty of managment, just the challanges they have) . This is simply because the 20 or so groups that open on a 'average' day are not sufficent to offset the closures of groups in the 8 thousand or so already existing groups on that same 'average' day.

Um, actually, the number of groups we "net" each individual day has usually been positive for months now.

And for the month of January it's been netting in the positive double digits almost every single day.

And a substantial number of the groups we've "lost" have been moribund groups "run" by absentee Organizers... so the number of groups "worth joining" frequently goes up even when we don't net any new groups for the day.

:)

Walter

I am sure that some days are very good ones, but all the stats including the Meetup ones show a decllining number of groups. Thus on average, closings exceed openings. When the number of groups increase week to week or month to month, then openings will have exceeded closings on the 'average' day.

Meetup has been at double digit openings since September at least and I think well before that. 40-50 a day was common until the loop hole was closed.

The quality of the new groups seem to be increasing from the rise in active members associated with those groups.

The basic problem you have with 8000 thousand existing groups is that even a tiny % closure rate can hurt. Lets say on a monthly basis 96% of the current 8000, renew, and only 4% close. Looks good? Except that the 4% is 320 groups and at the present rate of 20 new solid groups a day, you have just had a net shrinkage. This is complicated by the dual fee structure so that you are losing $10(or less) a month groups and getting $20 a month ones.

I passed my stats code to Jim. Hopefully he can make some sense of it and maybe even improve it a bit. If anyone else wants the code, let me know. I'll be around. Good luck to meetup with their new business model and to all the ex-meetup groups where ever they are.

all the stats including the Meetup ones show a decllining number of groups.

Quantitatively true in the most narrow sense but qualitatively false.

We don't especially care about the # of groups that officially exist. We mainly care about the number of groups that have at least one Meetup with 4 or more RSVPs each month. That statistic, more than any other, serves as an indicator of our overall health and growth.

Beyond that, we care about the number of paying Organizers. And the number of active members. And the monthly subscription revenue. All of those numbers have been doing quite well, and January is a blockbuster month for us.

So why has the official number of groups declined for some time? I'm not sure because I don't know where or how you're getting your numbers. When I look at our internal reports I see the number dropping until Christmas and then start heading back up.

Two reasons why it looks like this come to mind: 1) until mid-January, the daily decline in the # of groups was mostly clean-up from the loophole -- these groups were leaderless. 2) Old M+ subscribers were pretty quick to grab up a large number of groups to keep them from "dying". But then they mostly ignored them. As their M+ accounts expire those moribund groups finally go away.

One last final thought -- we don't give much thought to those numbers on the home page. Maybe we should revise them. Possible replace the # of groups with the # of individual Meetups scheduled.

Walter

all the stats including the Meetup ones show a decllining number of groups.

Quantitatively true in the most narrow sense but qualitatively false.

We don't especially care about the # of groups that officially exist. We mainly care about the number of groups that have at least one Meetup with 4 or more RSVPs each month. That statistic, more than any other, serves as an indicator of our overall health and growth.

Beyond that, we care about the number of paying Organizers. And the number of active members. And the monthly subscription revenue. All of those numbers have been doing quite well, and January is a blockbuster month for us.

So why has the official number of groups declined for some time? I'm not sure because I don't know where or how you're getting your numbers. When I look at our internal reports I see the number dropping until Christmas and then start heading back up.

Two reasons why it looks like this come to mind: 1) until mid-January, the daily decline in the # of groups was mostly clean-up from the loophole -- these groups were leaderless. 2) Old M+ subscribers were pretty quick to grab up a large number of groups to keep them from "dying". But then they mostly ignored them. As their M+ accounts expire those moribund groups finally go away.

One last final thought -- we don't give much thought to those numbers on the home page. Maybe we should revise them. Possible replace the # of groups with the # of individual Meetups scheduled.

Walter

Making the stats on the home page a bit more in line with your 'block buster' stats would be good. Say Active members, Topics with real groups and some blurb about all those groups that have met over the last month would be a good start. Then again if that had been done 6 months ago, I could be fully obsessed with my 200 hour Civilization III game. This all got started because of a lack of trust in the official figures.

I use the public accessable stats on Meetup Webpages.

IMHO, the M+ effect is long past. The 'great purge' of 6 months ago seems to have gotten rid of the weak or uninterested organizers. More of the activity of the last 3 months are the loop hole groups.

It looks like Jan figures average 40 a day.

The 01/21 stats will continue to decline but by about 56. The first increases in 3 months should start soon. But the cautionary tale to that is that we have been through this before with the loop hole.

Making the stats on the home page a bit more in line with your 'block buster' stats would be good. Say Active members, Topics with real groups and some blurb about all those groups that have met over the last month would be a good start. Then again if that had been done 6 months ago, I could be fully obsessed with my 200 hour Civilization III game. This all got started because of a lack of trust in the official figures.

I use the public accessable stats on Meetup Webpages.

IMHO, the M+ effect is long past. The 'great purge' of 6 months ago seems to have gotten rid of the weak or uninterested organizers. More of the activity of the last 3 months are the loop hole groups.

It looks like Jan figures average 40 a day.

The 01/21 stats will continue to decline but by about 56. The first increases in 3 months should start soon. But the cautionary tale to that is that we have been through this before with the loop hole.

Jim,

Sorry there's such a lack of trust. I think anyone would agree we publish far more about our internal data and inner workings than almost any other company out there. But we try to be as transparent as possible (without being irresponsible, of course), and really don't have any reason to be dishonest here.

We don't always make the right decisions, but I'd have to say everyone that works here is incredibly honest, Walter especially. He's our biggest fan AND our harshest critic, so you can be sure if numbers were sour, he'd be the one to tell you.

In any case, let's try to get past the trust issues and try having a more open dialogue about what's going on here. With that, responding to a couple things from your post...

---

1) As Walter said, we'll look at site stats and make some revisions. I don't really know when, or what might be added or taken away, but it's on the radar and we'll let you know when and where things change.

2) On the M+ effect and the purges, there are still things happening everyday on that front. Not to bore everyone, but I have a spreadsheet I look at daily where groups are either added or subtracted, and there are nine different classifications of groups on it. The M+ people are just one column (and 7 more M+ people expired this morning).

New people purchase, some people expire because they step down, some handover their groups and there's a break in the action, some have credit cards that decline, some use paypal in strange ways that don't auto-renew, some 3rd party partners sponsor groups and have coupons starting and expiring, etc, etc. In other words, there's a LOT going on behind the scenes that makes the number of total groups move. I wish it was as simple as 20 new groups in, 10 groups closed, net gain 10 groups, but it's just not.

So what do we care about? As Walter said, our biggest thing is successful groups, and we define a successful group as having a Meetup with 4 or more people attending. If that number grows, everything else will work out fine. And I'm happy to report that number is going to increase by 20-22% in January over December.

3) Some of those other things that were mentioned earlier are in good shape too. Stats like active members, new members added in the month, Meetups with 10+ people attending, and others are all reaching all-time highs this month. There's more activity within Meetups than ever before in our history.

And one really important one...more people than ever are having a great time at Meetups. We look at the percentage of people who rated their Meetup good or great (4 or 5) as an indicator. And it looks like that percentage is going to increase for the 20th month in a row. Now nearly 95% of all people who rate their Meetups give it a 4 or 5. To give you an idea of how much of an improvement that is, it was around 65% two years ago. The secret is simple...all you Organizers are amazing and making great Meetups happen everyday.

Hope that gives a little insight and clears up a couple things. I'm checking out tomorrow for 10 days, but I'll get some more regular stats updates going when I return. Happy weekend everyone!

-matt

Making the stats on the home page a bit more in line with your 'block buster' stats would be good. Say Active members, Topics with real groups and some blurb about all those groups that have met over the last month would be a good start. Then again if that had been done 6 months ago, I could be fully obsessed with my 200 hour Civilization III game. This all got started because of a lack of trust in the official figures.

I use the public accessable stats on Meetup Webpages.

IMHO, the M+ effect is long past. The 'great purge' of 6 months ago seems to have gotten rid of the weak or uninterested organizers. More of the activity of the last 3 months are the loop hole groups.

It looks like Jan figures average 40 a day.

The 01/21 stats will continue to decline but by about 56. The first increases in 3 months should start soon. But the cautionary tale to that is that we have been through this before with the loop hole.

Jim,

Sorry there's such a lack of trust. I think anyone would agree we publish far more about our internal data and inner workings than almost any other company out there. But we try to be as transparent as possible (without being irresponsible, of course), and really don't have any reason to be dishonest here.

We don't always make the right decisions, but I'd have to say everyone that works here is incredibly honest, Walter especially. He's our biggest fan AND our harshest critic, so you can be sure if numbers were sour, he'd be the one to tell you.

In any case, let's try to get past the trust issues and try having a more open dialogue about what's going on here. With that, responding to a couple things from your post...

---

1) As Walter said, we'll look at site stats and make some revisions. I don't really know when, or what might be added or taken away, but it's on the radar and we'll let you know when and where things change.

2) On the M+ effect and the purges, there are still things happening everyday on that front. Not to bore everyone, but I have a spreadsheet I look at daily where groups are either added or subtracted, and there are nine different classifications of groups on it. The M+ people are just one column (and 7 more M+ people expired this morning).

New people purchase, some people expire because they step down, some handover their groups and there's a break in the action, some have credit cards that decline, some use paypal in strange ways that don't auto-renew, some 3rd party partners sponsor groups and have coupons starting and expiring, etc, etc. In other words, there's a LOT going on behind the scenes that makes the number of total groups move. I wish it was as simple as 20 new groups in, 10 groups closed, net gain 10 groups, but it's just not.

So what do we care about? As Walter said, our biggest thing is successful groups, and we define a successful group as having a Meetup with 4 or more people attending. If that number grows, everything else will work out fine. And I'm happy to report that number is going to increase by 20-22% in January over December.

3) Some of those other things that were mentioned earlier are in good shape too. Stats like active members, new members added in the month, Meetups with 10+ people attending, and others are all reaching all-time highs this month. There's more activity within Meetups than ever before in our history.

And one really important one...more people than ever are having a great time at Meetups. We look at the percentage of people who rated their Meetup good or great (4 or 5) as an indicator. And it looks like that percentage is going to increase for the 20th month in a row. Now nearly 95% of all people who rate their Meetups give it a 4 or 5. To give you an idea of how much of an improvement that is, it was around 65% two years ago. The secret is simple...all you Organizers are amazing and making great Meetups happen everyday.

Hope that gives a little insight and clears up a couple things. I'm checking out tomorrow for 10 days, but I'll get some more regular stats updates going when I return. Happy weekend everyone!

-matt

Gee I hope the M+ folksgroup's expired not the folks.

The stat changes may or may not be significant. Trust is a delicate thing. Having 35 or more years in corporate life, I think that management sometimes tries to have it both ways, honest, and deceptive. All kinds of excuses are made, hide from competators, the truth will hurt morale, too little time to correct or higher priorities and so on, but the truth does come out. Of course you only get a single chance. In any case, the loss of trust thing is old news and most of the affected folks are gone in any case.

It is very hard to be public and hide your basic statistics. A story from WWII, A Swiss military writer wrote a book on the German order of battle, one of the highest secrets of the German Riche, prior to the outbreak of war. It was accurate and drove the German Army commanders to distraction. The Germans kidnapped him from Switzerland, and took him to Germany where he was interrogated. Where was the spy? There was no spy, he had compiled Germany's highest state secret from ......German news paper reports. Reports about who attended marriages, or promotions of local residents, obits, and official stories.

There is a surprising amount of info on meetup pages, however, looking at Yahoo groups, I could just about obtain the same info from Yahoo. I might not get a direct 'organizer needed' number, but I could tell if a group was growing, declining, dead or static. FWIW, it takes about 24 hours of work to collect compile and summarize meetup info. So it is no easy thing. Steven is stopping due to the amount of time it takes him.

I'd suggest that you all don't worry about the stats here in a defensive manner. If anything claiming a turn around is going to happen and it don't is not a good thing. Waiting for the last M+ coupon to expire is not good. Finding errors in my basic stats is a good thing, provide you have something other than saying that there are errors, but the truth is a secret. Pointing me to things I may not have noticed is a good thing. Things are good when we at least sorta cooperate.

An example of this is the 'loop hole' thing. Once Walter gave a heads up on it(after waiting a month?????), I've pointed it out as a cause of the decline, several times. Also when Walter said that it was literally raining new groups, I noted that, Yep it looks like an average of 40 new groups per day in Jan when I eyeball the raw data.

It is a real challenge to keep meetup going and growing to be sure. there are those 8000 existing groups organizers whor are going to get tired and quit. As the 'loop hole' noise goes aways, groups like crochet.meetup.com/112/ pop up. The stats seem good, 58 members, 18 active members, 4-6 RSVPs for meetings and about 3 years old. Picture of health except the organizer is gone.

Managing the organizers is a serious challenge as they have different reasons to be organizers. Literally training and supporting leaders is akin to a mini Dale Carnegie course for peanuts a month. I'd compare it to herding cats. It is a real challenge.

Managing the organizers is a serious challenge as they have different reasons to be organizers. Literally training and supporting leaders is akin to a mini Dale Carnegie course for peanuts a month. I'd compare it to herding cats. It is a real challenge.

We know it -- that's why the company is now divided in to 3 major goal-oriented teams and one of those 3 teams is 100% dedictaed to all things related to Organizers.

Walter

All stats following are for the entertainment of the readers. While a lot of effort has been made to insure accuracy, no warrenty is made. All stats come from public domain sources and are not official Meetup stats.

For the last few months the losses in the total group numbers have been laid at the door of a 'loop hole' where an organizer could become an organizer for 15 days without paying and the the group would become organizer needed for 30 more days and then be closed. In December, this 'loop hole' was closed. I have agreed with meetup about the 'loop hole' and its effects. However no real evidence has been presented.

There are some issues to be discussed first. From a political angle, this is dead data, the loop hole has been closed and Meetup has not only moved on, but is working very hard on improving the quality of each group. There is evidence that this is working, but it is based on eyeballing data which I have yet to format.

Meetup's metrics are reported to be focused on quality of groups and income from viable organizers.

My data is collected at irregular intervals while Meetup bills at regular intervals. So instead of a billing cycle plus 2 weeks, I assume that 7 weeks(49 days) is the cut off for the loop hole groups. The 'loop hole' stats may get other actors whose behavior is such that the group closes before 7 weeks. Some 'loop holers' at the edge may not get counted.

So in short the stats are free, and they are worth every penny of it.

Start 10/15/2005# of groups 11414
Total # Groups Observed 16295
Ending 01/21/2005 # Groups 8716

Gross Decline 2698
Actual Decline 7579

Total # Groups Observed is the number of groups with unique URLs that I have sampled.

The Gross Decline is the Start less the Ending # of groups
The Actual Decline is the Total # Groups less the ending figure and includes groups opened and closed prior to 01/21/2005.

Delta 1 Unidentified closed groups 23
Identified Closed Groups 7556
Total 7579

Delta 1 indicates the difference between the Actual Decline figure and actual observed closed groups. The figures are from two different processes. The following figures are from observed groups. It may be that 23 groups just dropped off my 'screen' due to sampling short falls or may have been resurrected as viable groups.


Loop Hole Groups 4645
Non Loop Hole Groups 2348
Observed Closed Groups with determined Start Dates 6993
Closed Groups with no start Dates 563
Identified Closed Groups 7556

This takes the Identified Closed Groups groups with a determined start state and divides them into 2 categories. One is 7 weeks or less between the start date and the last time they were observed. The other is greater than 7 weeks between between the start date and the last time observed.


Ratio of loophole groups to Non Loop hole 1.98
% of loophole groups to total observed 0.66

Basically the 'loop hole' groups made up 66% of the total closed groups.

imputed loopholes in the no start Date group 374
imputed non loopholes in the no start Date group 190

The applys the 66% against the 563 groups for which I had no start date.

Imputed loop hole activity 5019
Imputed Non loop hole activity 2537

The imputed totals including the groups without a start date.

Start Date of Samples 10/15/2005
End Date of Samples 01/21/2006
Days in sample 96

The samples spanned 96 days.

Number of Groups created 4886
Average Groups created per day 51

There was 4886 observed groups with start dates in the 96 day interval. I.E. they started between 10/15 and 01/21.

This averages to 51 openings a day.

Loop Hole Groups Closed / divide by days 52.28
Non Loop Hole Groups Closed / divided by days 26.43
Total 78.71

Identified closed groups divided by days 78.71

Net loss per day 27.81

The 51 groups a day gain was eclipsed by the 52 a day Loop Hole losses and the 26 a day other loses.


There is no way of know which 'loop hole' groups succeeded based on the data I have. However the Fotolog topic is a good indicator of its worst effects. There were 367 Fotolog groups created, only 4 lasted longer than 49 days and only 3 are open today.

In summary there was a massive 'loophole effect' where for whatever reason folks organized meetup groups but failed to pay for the continued existance of the meetup groups.