Watch our latest community update with Meetup’s new product lead, Chiara Vivaldi. During the live session, Chiara reviewed the key areas we’re prioritizing in the coming months: product reliability, communication tools, and event discoverability. 

About Bending Spoons

• Bending Spoons is a tech company and app developer based in Milan, Italy
• It became Meetup’s new parent company in January 2024
• Other apps in the company’s product portfolio include Splice, Remini, and Evernote
• Bonus: the name is a reference to the Matrix!

Quick recap: Top features launched in 2023

• Event feedback: view individual reviews 
• Advanced ticketing: offer special discounts
• New member profile page

2024 priorities

Boost product and platform reliability

We plan to invest substantial time and resources into this effort to unlock massive benefits down the line. We’ll do this by…

• Migrating a large portion of Meetup’s codebase
• Tackling bugs affecting core parts of the experience, like registration, event creation and payments 
• Simplifying the product (without compromising functionality)

Streamline communication tools

Customer research made it clear that there’s a lot we can improve in Meetup’s communications features. We’ll aim to improve functionality by…

• Streamlining communication features to prevent confusion
• Reducing noise from other Meetup emails and notifications

Increase discoverability of groups and events 

Event and group discovery is foundational for Meetup’s success and there’s a big opportunity to encourage members to attend events they’ll enjoy, We’ll tackle this opportunity from two sides:

• For members: Improve the suggestion algorithm and make the discovery experience more engaging
• For organizers: Leverage data and insights to help organizers create successful events

Top Q&A questions and resources

Will you add more bells and whistles? Or focus on basic functionality?
Right now, our top priority is the reliability of the platform. We’ve already started working on that. First, we want to make sure the product is solid. We’re going to tackle it bit by bit, starting with communication tools. Then, move on to everything else that drives value for Meetup.

We, organizers, are paying customers. As you improve the platform, how will you consult with us and communicate changes?
We’re huge on feedback and co-creation. We’re communicating what we do on various channels; Discord, blog, and X. It’s great when there’s unprompted feedback. We do read through it. In addition, we’re sending out surveys and doing customer interviews. Once we develop features, we will test them.

Resources

• Discord – Connect with other organizers
• Feedback form – Share your thoughts as you use Meetup
• X (Twitter) – Follow for regular updates on our progress

Last modified on March 26, 2024