2024 at Meetup was marked by many changes. Upon joining the Bending Spoons portfolio in January, the team saw an opportunity to take a fresh look at the entire Meetup ecosystem to determine what was working and what could be done better. We spoke with customers, evaluated the data, and organized and attended events. At the conclusion of our research, three key areas of improvement emerged—and became the priorities that guided our roadmap for the remainder of the year:
🎯 Boosting platform reliability
🎯 Streamlining communication tools
🎯 Improving group and event discoverability to drive greater engagement
Since then, the Meetup team has been working hard towards our ambitious goals. As we ramp up our work in the new year, I’m proud to share an update on our progress to date and what we’re working on next.
🎯 Boosting platform reliability
As Meetup has expanded to over 300,000 groups in more than 10,000 cities worldwide, so has its technical debt—a term used to describe the adverse effects of a complex and bloated backend system. If left unchecked, this debt can lead to a buggy user experience and undermine platform stability.
The team concluded that the best long-term solution to Meetup’s technical debt was a major, under-the-hood renovation. While this work may not be immediately visible, it’s vital for the product’s future as it shores up the foundations that will support more improvements and innovations down the line.
✅ 2024 progress
With all this in mind, addressing Meetup’s technical debt was our first priority project. Here’s how we tackled it:
- We simplified and modernized Meetup’s backend. This involved migrating critical parts of the codebase and removing the portions of the platform that were no longer in use. As a result, the platform became much leaner and more stable, allowing us to work faster and improving your everyday experience.
- We updated key portions of the Meetup website, such as group Discussions, the Calendar and Members list, the event and group creation tool, the new member onboarding flow, and many more.
- We fixed 400+ bugs. And we listed most of them in this public tracker we introduced mid-year (and will continue to update).
🔜 What’s next?
When it comes to our platform renovation, the most challenging part is behind us. Going forward, we’ll be able to fix issues at a quicker pace and focus on second-order migrations and improvements.
🎯 Streamlining communication tools
Meetup’s communication tools play a crucial role in managing groups and events, fostering community, and sharing information. But despite having access to multiple communication features, many organizers told us they weren’t confident their messages were actually reaching members. We took a closer look and identified a few potential causes:
- Overlapping features were creating unnecessary confusion
- Too many emails and notifications were leading members to mute or ignore messages—without organizers realizing it
- Long-standing bugs added further ambiguity about which messages were being delivered
With this in mind, we set out to make Meetup’s communication tools more reliable and easy to use.
✅ 2024 progress
- We set clear primary communication channels. Now, groups and events each have a designated tool: For group-wide communication, Discussions is the go-to, replacing outdated Message Boards. For event-specific conversations, Comments is the dedicated feature, replacing the redundant Event Chat. Other options—like Direct Messages, Event Announcements, and Contact Members—are still available as before.
- We then made Discussions and Comments better. Now you can format text with bold, italics, lists and links, plus pin important event comments for quick access. We also fine-tuned the notification system to make sure you consistently get updates about new messages, replies, and reactions.
- We made direct messaging more reliable. Conversation loading speed is now 5-10 times faster, with chats now updating in real-time. We reviewed our in-app notifications to ensure you know when you have a new message. Email and push notifications direct to the right conversation. Plus, we added a new message delivery status—now organizers and members can confirm that their messages are going through.
🔜 What’s next?
We’re shifting our focus to Event Announcements and Contact Members. These tools have a lot of room for improvement, so we’ll be digging into them to see where we can make the biggest impact. Stay tuned!
🎯 Improving group and event discoverability to drive greater engagement
Helping people discover groups and events they love is key to organizers’ success—and to Meetup’s success as a whole. That’s why we went looking for new ways to boost member engagement across the platform.
While our other objectives focused on specific features or issues, this one required a more comprehensive approach, and led us to refine multiple parts of the platform to enhance the overall experience.
✅ 2024 progress
We rolled out several improvements to make it easier for members to discover events and groups:
- We built a more engaging discovery experience. The Meetup Explore page on iOS got a fresh look—we updated the layout and event cards to make events more eye-catching and inspiring. The result? A 20% increase in RSVPs from the Explore page. We’re now working on bringing the same experience to Android and building a dedicated strategy for Meetup Web.
- We made event recommendations smarter. Previously, event recommendations were based on simple factors like distance and popularity. Now, our AI-powered algorithm personalizes suggestions based on each member’s interests and past activity, leading to more relevant recommendations—and more RSVPs.
- We improved search results for groups. Meetup’s old search only worked with exact keywords. Now, with AI-powered semantic search, we can deliver a broader range of relevant results. For example, searching for “food” now also returns results for groups that don’t explicitly mention the keyword in their name, like Pizza Lovers NY. These changes have already made an impact: clicks on search recommendations are up by 10%, and group joins from search results have increased by 9%.
🔜 What’s next?
We still have a lot of ideas to make Meetup even more engaging, and we’ll be tackling them from two angles: members and organizers. For members, we’ll explore ways to simplify discovering new groups and events—reducing friction, leveraging the power of social proof, and providing more upfront information about what to expect. For organizers, we’ll develop new tools and resources to understand what events members are looking for and integrate those learnings into your own events.
✨Improving organizers’ overall experience
Beyond our three main initiatives, we also rolled out several smaller—yet impactful—improvements to make Meetup more intuitive, reliable, and efficient for organizers. Here are some of the most significant updates from 2024:
- We improved Member dues. Now, all payments go through a single processor (Stripe), making collections smoother and more reliable. We also improved error handling and added payment status labels so organizers can easily see each member’s current standing.
- We made attendee data easier to access. Instead of pulling information from multiple sources, organizers can now download a single, consolidated file which includes details from the attendee list and members list, as well as responses to registration form questions (for Pro organizers).
- We optimized the member approval process. We made it easier to review and approve pending members by adding a “Pending since” date and a direct link to each request from the Pending list.
- We made network events more powerful. Pro organizers can now duplicate and monetize their network events, plus highlight a key guest using the new Speaker section.
- We enhanced Pro analytics. We migrated the Pro analytics dashboard to an in-house solution, making data collection faster and more reliable for clearer insights.
- We improved the user interface on 10+ pages. We optimized the experience of several useful tools and pages, such as Manage roles, Member dues, Organizer step-down, Create a new network (Pro), and many more.
🔮 Looking towards 2025
Throughout this article, I’ve discussed many of the next initiatives we have in mind—before I wrap up, I wanted to clearly recap our main priorities for the coming months:
- Bring our customers an even more reliable experience with additional improvements to Meetup’s backend technology and more bug-fixing across all our platforms.
- Double-down on small yet impactful changes to the platform to improve the overall organizer experience. This includes a huge range of items and takes into account the feedback we receive from our organizers about how we can improve their experience. For example, thanks to your feedback, we’re already working on making the Contact Members tool more robust.
- Drive member growth, event discovery, and engagement while also providing organizers with the necessary tools to create and host successful events. For example, we’re currently exploring how we can improve attendance tracking both before and after events.
This is just the beginning for Meetup—I look forward to sharing even more exciting updates on our progress in the months to come. I speak on behalf of the entire Meetup team when I say thank you to all our organizers. We’re so grateful that you’ve chosen Meetup as the place to build your communities, and I look forward to working with many of you in the coming year.
If you’d like regular updates on our progress, you’re welcome to join our Meetup Discord community—it’s a great way to connect with other organizers and share your experiences.
Until next time! 🚀
Chiara, Product lead at Meetup
Last modified on February 19, 2025
