Seattle has an active Blogging community that I, unfortunately, have not been a part of. The reason for this is that the meet once a month on a Wednesday night when, invariably, something else has been going on for me. I have regretted this because they do seem very active and I like the people I've met who are involved.
They use the Meetup tool to plan and advertise their meetings to the group. It's a great tool and has worked really well for them, as far as I can tell.
Recently Meetup decided to start charging for their previously free service. Meetup, at last check, is not a charitable organization, although they will give $50 to the Red Cross for a Snowglobe. So we, as customers, should want to give them some money so they don't go bankrupt and we lose the useful service.
In researching this post (yes, some bloggers actually get some facts), I found it really hard to find out exactly what I would be charged if I started a group. Here's what Meetup Says and the Forum the guide you to for more info. Maybe I missed something obvious, but they should make it clearer what the charges now are. I believe they are $19 a month.
The Seattle Blogging community, who are used to free tools like Blogger, del.icio.us, and Flickr. Were cranky about the fees and, because they are bloggers, they blogged about it. Then someone from Meetup responded and used the politically charged term "belly-achin'" (see first comment of the previous link).
This led to a fire storm chronicled here and culminating here.
The interesting thing here is the impact on the community and the reactions of the community to a variety of things. The community was annoyed because the rules of their community were suddenly changed because of a tax imposed by King James. The tax was slight, but constant. This meant that every time someone came to a meeting they would be divided into one group (the $2 self-taxed) or the other (the free riders).
Because this is a self-selected community, the free riders were people who were lawful previous weeks but, for whatever reason, couldn't easily come up with money. If this happened annually, that would be one thing, a short discomfort for the free rider and then merely a memory. But with monthly fees the free rider is conspicuous in their actions every week.
Again, these are people who previously were lawful, who have been put into an unlawful position through no fault of their own. Even if the fee is voluntary, it does not feel good for people with a moral conscience to not pay in to it.
This also creates a limited and adversarial commons where one previously did not exist. Members who are paying, even if it is only $2, achieve unwanted status for doing so. But it is status nonetheless. Non-paying members will know they didn't pay and, because they are moral and carry some guilt, will be less likely to participate. They feel less ownership in the group because they are not contributing the same amount.
Again, you may say that $2 isn't enough differential to buy power. However this article about Traffic.com suggests otherwise. Traffic.com donated about $16,000 to political candidates and walked away with $27 Million in government projects. Scaled for the size of the group, $2 is greater than $16,000.
The blogging community took this and ran with it, including me I guess. But, like most blogs, they were fracas-focused and not interested in the underlying issues.
Meetup.com should be able to charge for their service, but they should also be cognizant that imposing a monthly fee on groups that meet monthly will have an impact on the community of those groups and, therefore, their business. I might suggest a less-constant revenue stream.
