Meetup Live

Recording | Meetup+: The Best Way to Spark New Friendships

A deep dive into all the Meetup+ (formerly Member+) tools designed to bring people together and fight the loneliness epidemic.

By Emily Trieste

Reviewed by Mary Garcia

July 30 is International Friendship Day and we’re making it easier than ever to spark more friendships with new features on Meetup Meetup+ (formerly Member+). In this Meetup Live recording, we’ll be hosting a deep dive into all the platform tools we’ve rolled out to bring people together and fight the loneliness epidemic.

Watch Meetup team members Annyce Davis, VP of Engineering, and Mike Bass, Senior Product Manager, for a walk-through of platform features designed to facilitate friendships. Hear real stories of members who found their community with Meetup+. Learn how organizers can also benefit from this suite of friendship features and get the scoop on what’s to come with Meetup+.

Timestamps:

Fighting the Loneliness Epidemic (1:31)
- Members Want to Form Relationships (2:49)
- Meetup Helping Members Form Friendships (5:53)
Why Meetup? (7:30)
How Meetup+ can Help Build Friendships (8:44)
- Unique Features to Meetup+ (10:21)
Meetup+ Goals (21:01)
Impact of Meetup+ (21:37)
Finding Events to Make Friends (22:48)
Q&A Session (25:40)

Top Q&A Questions and Resources:

Can we hide group memberships from people with Meetup+?
- Annyce: Yes, you can hide your group memberships. There’s a setting on your profile where you can choose not to make your groups public and that will mean that anyone viewing your profile won’t be able to see shared groups with you or the group memberships that you belong to.
Are these features only available on the app, what about desktop?
- Mike: You can get that benefit now. Our web platform functionality follows our apps, but yes, these features are on web or coming to web. An example of this is the brand new profiles feature. Right now it is on the Android app and is not yet on iPhone. Then it will come to the web in a few months. So it’s a little bit delayed there, but it’s coming and you’ll get those benefits on the website.
With Meetup+ will I have access to Meetup groups that I would not otherwise have?
- Annyce: For now, the answer is no. We haven’t considered creating any special Meetup groups for Meetup+ subscribers exclusively, but that’s an interesting thought.