BB bb (Photo: Instagram)

Glasshole Missed Connection Betabeat finally had the distinct pleasure of trying the dorky looking face computer we love to mock so much at a party last night at Meetup HQ. We (only slightly drunkenly) approached a tall white dude donning Google Glass and timidly asked if we might be able to try it on. When we slipped on the device (in slate!), the display was incredibly blurry--not due to our eyesight, but because Glass specifically calibrates to the wearer's eye. It was hard as hell to see, but the voice commands worked almost seamlessly, impressive since we were at a loud party.

The device's functionality is fairly limited: you can take a picture, record video and get directions to and from places. It also has the added benefit of making you look like a complete dork while somehow also attracting swaths of attractive ladies to get up real close to your face.

As it turns out, the Glasshole bro developed a crush on a Betabeat acquaintance, but even his face computer couldn't help him remember her name or even what she looked like. Instead, knowing only where she worked, he sent a LinkedIn message to a coworker he thought was her, but nope. (They do have the same hair color.) The coworker then forwarded his picture around the office asking if anyone had met him the night prior and wanted to date him. In the picture, he was wearing Glass.

A source also tells Betabeat that the Glass-wearing dude is working on a facial recognition app for the device that would take a person's picture and tell the wearer what their name is. You do you, Mr. Glasshole, but you might want to get on that one sooner rather than later.

Royal Joyriding  Important update in the Yellow Cab Wars: Here is a photo of Prince Harry (you know, the hot one) getting a personal demo from Hailo's cofounder:

Hailo co-founder Russ showed Prince Harry how to use Hailo to get home after a big night at the @uktiusa Tech event: hailo.to/l4naQ

— HailoNYC (@HailoNYC) May 15, 2013

Breakfast Breakup If you make a breakfast date with Ben Lerer, don't you dare stand him up. Mr. Lerer tweeted that he had early morning breakfast plans with Gawker publisher Nick Denton (at Balthazar, we assume?), but that the media mogul failed to show. Perhaps Mr. Denton was getting a head start on wedding planning.

https://twitter.com/BenjLerer/status/333934325286436866

What Is... Eyeroll Jeopardy does its best to related to the youngs during its college editions. As such, Wednesday's episode featured a category called "Yo-lo," as well as an entire column devoted to "Techie Dropouts." Tech familiars name-checked in that round included Kevin Rose, David Karp and Mark Zuckerberg. Aaron Swartz was the $2,000 answer.

https://twitter.com/1uigi/status/335006407361433600

(Photo: Tumblr)

A Meetup for Meetups Last night, we climbed an interminable number of stairs to reach the rooftop where Meetup was holding a celebration for its 100 millionth RSVP. We arrived to find hotdogs, plentiful kegs and even a tiny lawn made of AstroTurf. Musical accompaniment was provided by (what else?) a local bluegrass Meetup.

Among the crowd we spotted Laughing Squid’s Scott Beale in conversation with man-about-town Rex Sorgatz, Branch’s Josh Miller chowing down on a hot dog, and Small Girl Mallory Blair working the crowd. Lindsay Kaplan and Richard Blakely, Baratunde Thurston, Chris Kennedy and Kickstarter’s Fred Benenson also turned out.

“Meetup got started when there were two towers over there. Now there’s one tower going 1776 feet in the air. And Meetup wouldn’t be here if that tragedy didn’t happen,” said founder Scott Heiferman, standing up to extemporize a few remarks. “The worst things happen when people meet up. But thankfully, more often, the best things happen in life when people meet up.”

As we rode the Gilded Age elevator back downstairs later that evening, several people pulled out their phones to check their Hailo reservations. “I Hailo’d three times today,” one said proudly.

Wedding Bells Last weekend, at a ranch in Glen Ellen, California, New York Times columnist David Pogue married his longtime girlfriend, PR pro Nicole Vosshall Dugan. No word whether the vows included a brief but tasteful disclosure.

Mistaken identity Recently, one Betabeat reporter found herself in her umpteenth conversation about Lean In. A male developer frowned and announced, befuddled: "Oh, I thought that was a lean startup book." So, there’s that.

We’re Puking. Here’s a cool glimpse of what they’re serving up in Hell, er Silicon Valley: Angry Bird-themed sushi rolls! Much to Selina Meyer’s relief, it isn’t a fine Finnish import and it’s not made of real birds-- just fake fish. We don’t know what tastes more depressing: the Angry Birds II roll (filled with mango, torched salmon, and “special sauces”) or the OMG roll that contains a spring mix salad and torched white tuna. What’s worse is that the ginger is probably served room temperature.

https://twitter.com/jowyang/status/333750310633873408

Better than a “I’m With Stupid” mug. Oh, ha ha. Look at Jack “the Jokester” Dorsey everyone! The personified short-circuiting Twitter feed joked that he was giving arch nemesis Mark Zuckerberg one of his snazzy new Square stands for his “hoodie business.” It’s a joke because the Facebook CEO wears a lot of hoodies! The animated interaction happened on Twitter, a website that Mr. Zuckerberg (née @finkd) hasn’t used since 2012. We really need to figuring out a neutral platform for these two nerds to troll each other on. Reddit?

https://twitter.com/jack/status/334339997626949634

Time for school! (Photo: flickr.com/slambert)

First Round Capital has built a brand-new platform for startups seeking press coverage: HackPR, designed to connect them with journalists. The firm is hoping to replicate the same kind of buzz that made Warby Parker an e-commerce darling after an early profile in GQ. [TechCrunch]

Kids from Cornell got a tour of the New York startup scene yesterday. [New York Daily News]

Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures are all backing a startup called LendUp, which'll make small loans (think $300) to people with poor credit. Basically, it's an alternative to the traditional payday loan, with friendlier customer service. Good luck and God bless. [AllThingsD]

No, you're not just imagining it: There are Meetups everywhere, all the time, for everything. You're going to need to be strategic in your selection. [WYNC]

Please enjoy this cri de coeur against Instagram filters, which are basically photography training wheels. [Wired]

Mr. Williams atop an ErgoErgo chair (Photo: Holly Huitt)

Stop all the treadmill desks. Cut off the adjustable legs on your standing desk. Prevent the bouncing of the Bosu ball chairs with a single shove. Silence the walking meetings with a company-wide memo.

That was the verse going through our head earlier this afternoon when Betabeat came across this arresting image on Andrew Zebulon Williams' Facebook page. Over gChat, we asked Mr. Williams, a community team specialist at Meetup (and stylish summer shorts enthusiast), what gives. "It's some shit that's like good for your back or something," he explained, sending us a link to the ErgoErgo chair, whose makers appear to be based in New York.

Actual promotional photo (Photo: ErgoErgo.com)

According to Mr. Williams, "to test 'em out," Meetup has ordered 12 of the $100 devices, which also come in orange and advertise themselves as vehicles for something called "dynamic sitting."

Unlike regular, useless, unoptimized sitting, which is slowly killing you (yes, you) this very second via your butt, "dynamic sitting," ErgoErgo promises, will "engage your core and back muscles to build strength and flexibility."

What's more, "ErgoErgo allows the body to move freely in any direction." Just think of all the disruption you'll be able to wreak when you're not being held back by spinal support.

At the Meetup. (flickr.com/alextorrenegra)

Sick of the last New York Tech Meetup ticket selling out just before you have a chance to get your hands on it? Well, good news if you absolutely must attend every demo: The organization has just announced the launch of a beta-stage annual membership.

In an email sent to members earlier this afternoon (available here in blog form), the NYTM team points out that, while tickets have been $10 since 2008, those big demo nights aren't exactly getting any cheaper to host:

We haven’t changed the price despite increases in venue rental and overall production costs, or to cover our expenses in becoming a non-profit organization, hiring our first employee, introducing monthly simulcasting, launching the Made in NY program, and a whole host of other projects we’ve implemented to do what we can to support the growing NY tech community.

While raising ticket prices overall would be one way to "help us build our organizational capacity," the NYTM team would like to keep the gatherings equally affordable for scrappy student startup founders and the wealthy angel investors who'd like to find them.

Hence the memberships, which promise a guaranteed seat at each meetup--or at least, they're kinda guaranteed. There'll be an early ticketing process for members, who'll have two weeks to pay up before their tickets are released for wider purchase. But buying a membership isn't the same thing as pre-purchasing tickets, nor are the tickets included in the price of the membership.

Members also get access to exclusive events and a chance to provide feedback on the membership itself.

There are only 200 slots up for grabs, and the process by which NYTM has elected to make the tickets available is interesting. The first 100 invites will go to NYTM members who've attended 15 or more meetups; then there'll be a second 100-ticket lottery for NYTM members who haven't been to as many demo nights but are still enthusiastic enough to cough up the cash. Sounds to us like it might be a little complicated balancing the loyalty of the long-timers and the needs of the hordes of newcomers.

Nor is this exactly free or even ultra-cheap--it'll set you back $300. Plus, NYTM is asking that everyone "pledge to give something back to the community." Qualifying examples include volunteering to advise a nonprofit on digital strategy or hosting office hours.

While this is certainly an opportunity for the ultra-devoted, we can't imagine that blocking off 200 seats a month will make it any easier for the average startup enthusiast to get his hands on a ticket.

Mr. Lewis (twitter.com/mlewislogic)

One of the most salient pieces of advice offered at yesterday's lady CEO panel at Internet Week is to find a mentor you trust who can help guide you through the turbulent ecosystem of Startupland. NYC Tech Mobilizer, a lightweight summer program for developers, wants to help you find that mentor. The program, which is in its second year, links up prospective mentees with talented mentors from some of New York’s hottest startups, including Foursquare, Gilt Groupe, Birchbox and Meetup.

NYC Tech Mobilizer is the brainchild of Fondu CTO Mike Lewis, who moved to New York a little over two years ago with a masters in computer engineering, ready to dive into the startup sector.

"I got here with absolutely no network, no connections," Mr. Lewis told Betabeat by phone. The premise for the program, he said, is that it's "the program that I wished I'd had when I first moved here with no connections and wanted to break into startups."

NYC Tech Mobilizer extremely lightweight. Mentees are expected to meet with their mentors at least once a month for June, July and August, as well as attend networking happy hours. It's designed for the professional developer, or, as Mr. Lewis put it, "Developers that are just out of school and have been working doing dev for a few years and they’re really interested in startups. Either they’re looking to join a startup as a developer or they’re working to found their own company. People who are just smart, highly driven and who are in love with the rapid growth of startups."

"It's win win for everybody," Mr. Lewis said of the program. "It’s a chance for all the mentors to get to know each other and a way for them to get to know up and coming developers. For developers, it’s a way for them to get themselves tapped into the current ecosystem."

The program is free, and open only to professional developers. Mr. Lewis said he felt there were many programs for entrepreneurs, but a dearth of those focused on devs. "I feel like there’s a real lack of stuff out there for taking developers and helping them develop their leadership skills," he admitted.

NYC Tech Mobilizer is only admitting 15 applicants, so if you're considering applying, you better do so before the May 25th deadline.

Mr. Hsieh/Mr. Wiggles

Earlier this month, Meetup CEO Scott Heiferman announced the newest member of the Meetup cap table: Zappos front man Tony Hsieh. "indeed, tony (zappos ceo) bought out one of our shareholders," Mr. Heiferman wrote in a company-wide email.

"i'm thrilled--because tony is a true hero of great companies, cultures, customer experience, community and it can't hurt to have another hsieh around," he added, referring presumably to Richard Hsieh, Meetup's lead software engineer here in New York.

Mr. Heiferman didn't specify which shareholder was bought out. Previous investors include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Omidyar Network, eBay, and Union Square Ventures. In February, cofounder Matt Meeker left to launch BarkBox, a Birchbox for dogs. Mr. Heiferman said that Mr. Hsieh's motivation was two-fold:

tony bought a piece of meetup because he believes in our potential --both meme & money: he wants us to revolutionize community for people-- and i think he wants a cut of the profit as we keep growing over the long-haul (or whatever way that all of our stock/options pay out)

Based on the growth in new members, things are definitely looking up-and-to-the-right, as they say.

As for Mr. Hsieh, this isn't his first run-in with the company.  Back in 2009, he introduced staffers to a scooter-racing alter-ego known as Mr. Wiggles (at about 1.50):

Every startup's gotta start somewhere (National Archief | flickr.com)

KNOWLEDGE. Max Stoller, the developer of Don't Eat At, an app that uses city data to warn Foursquare users when they've checked into a restaurant that's run afoul of city health inspectors, has found another cool way to use that same data set. Mr. Stoller and fellow crafty hacker Tal Safran created freshplac.es, a bi-weekly email of new drinking and dining sports near you. "We found that by analyzing the restaurant inspections data set for new records, we can identify brand new bars/restaurants, often before news publications get to them." (Techies! Stop scooping us newsies!) Sign up but please, don't forget about us!

EBOOK BINDING. Vook, the self publishing ebook tool from serial entrepreneur Brad Inman, just spent the past three months with 500 beta testers as they completely reengineered their platform. They've eliminated 200 bugs and added 31 brand new features including easier file conversion, and real time title rendering and even easier electronic distribution to Barnes & Noble and Amazon with the push of a button.

MIC CHECK. The winner of  last week's Investor's Feedback forum were Nihal Parthasarathi for CourseHorse, an online app that helps users find classes that interest them in New York City. The two other winners were Rob Caucci for SpaceSplitter, an online tool designed to make living with roommates less stressful and Julian Barnes of Body Local, the one-stop shop for classes, news, advice, a local directory and marketplace for everything to do with keeping fit. The next Investor Feedback Forum is March 8.

TRISTE NOTICIA. The guy behind the group emailing service Fiesta have announced the end of the party. In a blog post, cofounder Mike Dirolf said after thirteen months he's "lost the enthusiasm that is necessary to continue to work tirelessly on solving the problem" of group communication online. The website will remain active until March 1 so current users can login to collect their information. After that, the servers will be shutdown, emails will no longer be receivable and all personal data will be deleted.

MAKE FRIENDS. Tonight the NY Enterprise Technology Meetup will feature demos from Revolution Analytics, Thrupoint, Infragistics, and CB Insights. The meetup runs from 7-9. RSVP and pay $5 if you want to know where.

DESAYUNO. Hubitat wants to show you the benefits of reinventing the wheel over breakfast this Thursday at their HQ. RSVP here for $15 or pay $20 when you arrive.

WORK AND PLAY. Projective Space, the "community-centered coworking space for tech startups and entrepreneurs" is kicking off the opening of their brand new space by partnering with fundraising platform IndieGoGo for a "HUGE DANCE PARTY!" The bash is Thursday night at the new PS space at 72 Allen St. in the Lower East Side. RSVP and say hello to Reyka and Sailor Jerry for us.

ADOPT EARLY. Check out the new "powerful publishing optimization technology" from Betaworks.

INNOVATE.  Snap Interactive needs a Javascript expert.
Conductor is looking for a technical recruiter
HealthPrize wants a new project manager
Foursquare, HealthPrize, Conductor and Rent the Runway are looking for interns.

You started Meetup right after 9/11, and part of the inspiration was conversations with strangers. Can you talk about what some of those conversations were like?

On 9/11 and the days after, [I was] having random interactions with neighbors and people in the neighborhood and people in my apartment building and strangers on the street. People were more friendly and friendly to conversation. I actually discovered the book “Bowling Alone” in a blog post a week or two after 9/11.

I actually was looking back on my old Amazon—you know Amazon keeps the history of everything you ever bought so, it’s funny... I bought the book “Bowling Alone” a few weeks after 9/11 and I think the idea there was, the essence of what that meant to us, and what stood out, was this idea that there are these linkages between people interacting with strangers and trust.

Basically, the less you interact with strangers the less you trust strangers and the less yo trust strangers, the less you interact and by that trusting of strangers—really is a proxy for being happy or feeling that the world isn’t totally screwed up. Because if you walk around thinking like that everyone’s an asshole and you can’t trust anybody, one would think ‘oh, well as long as you could just go into your cocoon of friends and family...’ but the reality is if you don’t trust the world around you, you're going to—it’s a vicious cycle that becomes coarser and nastier and less friendly world.

Someone told me you like to give copies of this book away.

Yeah. When someone’s hired at Meetup they get a copy of “Bowling Alone.”

I don’t have time to read the whole thing. Are there specific parts I should check out?

It’s okay, I didn’t read the whole thing either. I think what’s interesting is to look at all the pretty charts and graphs about the declining membership that a lot of these 20th century organizations have had. And you can ask yourself, okay, do we need to recreate your grandfather's Kiwanis Club in order to have a neighborhood-y vibe in the 21st century? The answer is no.

The thing to scan in that book—and I don’t mean to paint it like it’s some bible for Meetup, but the question is not, who cares about the fraternal organizations and the VFW and all that kind of stuff—the question is more, what role did the fact that people were working together with other people and had this sort of opportunity to have an outlet outside of just work and family and friends, what role did that play in people’s lives? How did it relate to optimism and how did it relate to people feeling like they could be a whole person?

The foundation of that is embedded in some of what people do on Facebook and Twitter and how it has something to do with Foursqaure and all sorts of things. In our case we’re just hitting it dead on and saying that a city is a better city if there’s all these opportunities to do what you did over seven days [go to seven random meetups]. But those communities are now there and they’re in place and they’re welcoming and they’re friendly and how does it make a city better when those opportunities are available to people? And that’s some of what you should go fishin’ for in the book.

At the Meetups I asked people why they came. A lot of people said it’s really hard to meet people in New York. It’s a city with eight million people but it’s really hard to meet one. Have you ever experienced that personally? Are you from New York?

No, I’m from the Midwest. Grew up in Illinois, went to school in Iowa.

Yeah certainly. There’s a lot of different influences that inform why I started Meetup, but one of them is just the —there’s a band that’s no longer together that—I was really into this band for years and years and years and I saw the band—I probably saw 20 of their shows over the course of seven or eight years snd the joke was, it came to a point where a friend of mine, they were sick of this band and I had no one to go with. I went to probably half of these shows just by myself at Bowery Ballroom and other places and what’s funny is that I would see some of the similar faces time after time at this band’s shows and my entire experience of going out to see this band was, I would grab a bite to eat by myself and I would go to the show and I’d stand there and I wouldn’t talk to anybody. I’d stand waiting for the show to start, I’d be there for the show and then I’d filter out staring at my shoes leaving and—maybe it’s just being shy—or I don’t know what but there was no context for being allowed to talk to anyone that would have been awkward.

And so the concept of Meetup was, it’s not just find the people that have a similar interest because the other people that like that band were in the same place multiple times a year, but it’s more about giving them permission to talk to people, giving them license to talk to each other. I’ve sort of felt that, not only is this a city of eight million people, but this is a hardcore fanbase of a few hundred people and yet no one said I could talk to them.

What was the name of the band?

Luna.

What kind of music was it?

Sort of post-Velvet Undergroundy New York vibe. I dunno. You can Google them.

When was that?

One reason why I moved to New York was because I liked this band and I said, you know, wherever they’re from is probably a good place to be and that was New York. This was like ‘95 to 2005. And I started Meetup in 2002

When you started Meetup, did you start a Meetup for this band?

Oh shit. I knew you were going to ask that. I did not and... I don’t know why. I used it for other stuff but—I really had that in mind. In fact one of the original mockups—wireframes and stuff that I designed for Meetup were using Luna as the example. You know what it was, I think they were largely broken up by like 2004. I don’t know why I never started that Meetup.

Nowadays they’d have a forum.

They all did. That’s the other thing. Any kind of active online forum always had people saying ‘who on this list is in Chicago?’ or ‘who here is in New York?’ They did have online stuff going on but no one had the guts to propose something Meetup-like.

You asked me if I ran into a lot of people scouting for someone to date. That bugs you?

No, it bugs me when it’s sort of dominant in Meetups that aren’t. [Many] Meetups are singles-focused and it’s great—those can be great. It’s when people have an experience where they are not looking for that and that’s what some people bring. We hear it occasionally and I hear it occasionally and I always ask the question, whenever someone goes to Meetups, was that what it was? And most of the time it’s no.

When people hear about Meetup for the first time, and it’s outside the context of a tech Meetup and it’s outside the context of a mom’s Meetup or anything like that, [to] kind of make sense of what the hell it is, they think that it must be some dating thing, because why the hell would you want to meet people if not to hookup or get money? 'Why on Earth would you want to talk to anybody that you don’t already if not for sex or money, I don’t get it,' is the feeling.

Does Meetup look different in NYC versus the rest of the country?

New York is the biggest Meetup city so you get a really good things happening by [virtue of the fact that it] hits a tipping point of the density of everything going on. We have these anomaly cities like Raleigh-Durham, NC. You have per capita almost three [times] the number of meetups and peole in meetups than even in New York. So there Meetup is this very, very popular and common. You just see things working better because more Meetups get a critical mass and all that.

The other thing that’s—we used to have a joke—I’ve met with Meetup organizers in about 35 cities around the world. If I’m going to a city we’ll do an organizer meetup where we invite the organizers and I’ll meet 20, 50, 100 Meetup organizers, and we’ve done that in New York and the interesting thing was always that New York organizers always sort of brought out this—and this is early in the days of Meetup—really extreme characters; whereas in other cities they were not so extreme.

Extreme how?

Just really eccentric—and eccentric can be beautiful. I like eccentric—but just eccentric in anyway you can imagine. Very passionate—I don’t know how to describe... Here in New York we have five or six thousand Meetup organizers. I'm talking about back when there were maybe one thousand so many it’s shifted.

That said, the similarities [of] New York and other cities is kind of remarkable also. You’ll see how the community cell-divides and spawns new communities so the way in which New York has hundreds and hundreds of mom's meetups—the stay at homes moms of this neghborhood and the working moms of that neighborhood and the Jewish, black lesbian moms Meetup of this neghborhood—I’m making that one up but the way in which they divide, city by city, you see it mimic the similar divisions. The different kinds of hiking Meetups and the different kinds of parenting Meetups and all these different things and you say ‘wow, what a distinctive way in which they’ve cell-divided and formed this whole network in New York.' You look at L.A. or London, you say ‘oh my God.' A lot of the same frustrations that different people have had have created the same sort of varied and interesting mix of Meetup groups.

I would imagine that one thing unique to Meetup in New York is how specific some of the Meetups are to the point where they’re hard to describe. Do niche meetups like that happen in other cities?

Absolutely. I don’t know if this is a dirty secret or not but a lot of that often comes out of the frustrating expereinces that people will have going to this one and they say ‘you know, this is fine but what we really need is something where it’s for these people and not those people’ and so they create that. It’s a really interesting, almost Darwinian ecosystem. And yeah the get really specific. I started a Meetup group just a week or two ago. Even though in my neighborhood there are over 50—I’ve got a one year old and even though there are over 50 parenting meetups in my neighborhood, the perfect one that I wanted didn’t exist and so therefore I wasn’t able to get what I wanted. I want just nine-16 month olds who just live in this part of the neighborhood and so I had to create. And Saturday I had eight babies on my living room floor.

I know you’re a part of the New York City Dads Meetup. What other Meetups are you a part of?

That’s on the public site... There’s a bunch that I’m active in.

How many Meetups are there in New York, on average, each day?

I knew that, let’s see. I think about 3,000 a week so four or five hundred and probably about half of those are at a critical mass point... so there’s probably 200-plus that have at least four or more people signed up.

What do you mean by critical mass?

Internally we refer to something as a “SMUG” ... which means successful Meetup group or successful Meetup. We know that if a Meetup has four people singed up it’s probably ging to be a good experience. If less than four people signed up it will probably suck.

We also know that if a group has had a Meetup with four or more RSVPs, if they’ve had an event in the past month with four or more RSVPs we know that it’s likely to continue going and growing well and if they don’t then the group will probably fail.

On an average day we have about 10,000 meetups worldwide and about five to six thousand of them have four or more people. Some meetups are four people. some are 400. There are about 100,000 people going to a Meetup on a heavier day.

We crossed 500,000 New Yorkers a few months ago. Just the City. [and New York is the biggest city]

Are you familiar with the people who are sort of “Meetup addicts?”

Yep.

Do you have an in-house slang for that?

Not that I can say...

There’s one guy... For all I know he could be a member of a thousand Meetup groups and he goes to all of them. No he doesn’t. He’s a really great guy, given us great feedback through the years.

Do you think there are people that Meetup doesn’t work for? For whom Meetup is just not relevant?

The reason why I’m gonna be working onthis for many years to come is because we haven’t yet proven that this kind of community can be good for everyone. And when I say everyone, I don’t mean most people, I mean literally everyone. The people who say that, ‘well I don’t have enough time’ or ‘I have enough friends’—I’ve had enough situations where people who initially looked at Meetup and they said ‘oh that’s really nice, oh that’s great.’ This common thing—almost like an NPR perspective.

Anyone can look at Meetup and say ‘oh that’s really wonderful, that’s really good. and you say ‘what about you?’ and they say, ‘well that’s not for me. I’m not that kind of person. I don’t have those kinds of needs. It’s not right for me.’ A photographer I talked to said it looks really great but not for him and then I said ‘well you know there’s Meetups for professional photographers’ and he said ‘yeah, I don’t know’ He said he ended up joining this photographers Meetup and it was really good for his business—oh and by the way he said ‘I don’t really like people’—and the thing is is that I’m of the belief that most people have no interest in meeting people. In fact, the last thing they would want to do ever is have to talk to anyone. A Meetup is the last thing in the world that they’d want to do.

But even for those people, for their careers, for their lives, for whatever these things that are important to them. In the case of the photographer, he could use his photography business to be better. He said, ‘no it was great. In this Meetup they trade leads, they trade vendors, they trade help and they work with each other on projects and gigs’ and he said that it’s just been really, really great for his business. And then he goes, ‘oh and the people are really great too.’ It’s like, speaking of the Midwest, there was an old restaurant chain that said, ‘Come for the food. Stay for the pie.’

What we’re saying is, people are going to come for the benefits and maybe stay for the people. So we’re Meetup, but I don’t think people want to meet up. I think that they want all this other stuff. To learn what they want to learn, improve their careers, start businesses, grow their business. They want to stand up for something important, they want to run a marathon and all that kind of stuff. No one goes to Weight Watchers or AA because they really want to hang out with people, no it’s because they want to lose wieght or they want to deal with their alcoholism. If you think of Meetup as the thing where you want to meet people, that’s great and there are millions of people who will do that but a lot of where we are and a lot of where we’re going is around trying to make easier and better this thing that would actually help everyone, in different ways, at some point in their lives.

What do you mean, it's like an "NPR thing?"

“I think people start these Meetups where it’s like, ‘we’re going to have trans-partisan discussion where Republicans are going to talk to Democrats and we’re going to talk it out and we’re going to have this great experience of finding commonality amongst our differences.’ This do-gooder concept—anyone can look at that and say, ‘oh, that’s really great, oh, that’s really nice’ but you know, those Meetups fail. You know why? Someone... is going to look at that and be like ‘Okay, do you want to go on Thursday night to a trans-partisan Democrat-democracy discussion town hall where we Democrats are going to talk to Republicans?’ No, they don’t want to do that.

What’s more interesting, and Esther Dyson, one of our investors, she put it really well she said she’s more interested in the mom’s Meetup where Democrats and Republican women are there then the Democrat Meetup or the Republican Meetup because the natural way people will find these bridges—my point is, it’s not a just a flyover concept, what I’m saying is it’s the difference between people saying they should go to a Meetup and they actually will in their real life.

What we’re basically saying is no, actually, community is a cure for a lot of things in a lot of people’s lives—or it can be. We are on a long-haul mission to spark that and what I think we’ll find, and this is over the course of a generation, in the years ahead it’ll become pretty obvious and normal that people in the world are collaborating and cooperating and actually just finding benefits to themselves by not being hermetically sealed in their Facebook filter bubble.”

You said you don’t think you’ve succeeded yet. What has to happen?

We need to make it so much easier and so much better and then it just has to hit more and more natural tipping points where Meetup is more of a household world and the idea of solving a problem in your life—When you think, ‘damnit, this year I’m going to run that half-marathon,’ that you don’t just watch a video about how to train, you don’t just read a webpage about how to train for that half-marathon, but that it just feels natural to say, 'oh I wonder if there’s a Meetup in my neighborhood on Saturday of people who are running the half-marathon... because we’ll be more likely to succeed.'

The Start Living in 2012 inaugural meetup.

Around 8 p.m. on a recent Monday, about 35 people of disparate ages were sitting on the marble steps of the public atrium inside Two World Financial Center, listening to a 25-year-old in baggy jeans named Jordan Phoenix talk about Living. “This is the class where we figure out who we are and what we want to do with our lives,” he told his audience, a range of artists and professionals, employed and unemployed, 20-somethings and middle-aged divorcees who, like me, were drawn in by Mr. Phoenix’s aggressive pitch on the website Meetup.com.

As the post had put it: “This group is for you if you know you are capable of greatness, but are unclear and frustrated about how to get there.” The group, “Start Living in 2012,” had picked up more than 100 members in three days, which made it a very fast-growing meetup group indeed.

“I love that everyone here showed up,” Mr. Phoenix said. “Sixty-eight people RSVP’ed. Thirty people didn’t show up. Guess what? They’re not invited to the next meetup, because they’re bullshit artists.”

I had no intention of going to the next meetup. As much as I want to start living in 2012, I was merely a tourist.

Meetup is a website where strangers with common interests can organize get-togethers. In New York, where it started, it has become a compendium of microsubcultures. I have a small habit of peeking at Meetup every once in a while, just reading the descriptions and marveling at how nudists, Dungeons & Dragons players and “male cat lovers” talk when they’re speaking just to one another. (“We celebrate and cherish our cats. We are male. Sometimes we feel like no one understands us when you show them pictures of your cat or share stories about its adventures in your apartment.") There are meetups for Satanists and ukulele players, swingers and “deep thinkers,” as well as a wealth of groups for people “just doing their daily shit,” as one Meetup employee put it. Voyeuristically, it’s richer than Craigslist’s missed connections and more authentic than New York’s sex diaries.

Meetup is a strange world for the average ironical urbanite. For me, socializing revolves around drinking, primarily with people I already know. And as much as I grouse about both of those facts, I had the same feelings about Meetup that I did about online dating: it’s something other people do.

My attitude was common, Scott Heiferman, the co-founder and CEO of Meetup, told me in a recent phone interview. “Anyone can look at Meetup and say ‘Oh, that’s really wonderful,’” he said. “And you say ‘what about you?’ And they say, ‘Well, that’s not for me. I’m not that kind of person. I don’t have those kinds of needs.’” Mr. Heiferman, of course, believes Meetup is for everyone. Recently, a misanthropic photographer dismissed Meetup as being “not for him.” “I don’t really like people,” he told Mr. Heiferman. But after joining a professional meetup group to trade leads, share vendors and collaborate on projects, the photographer admitted he’d been wrong. It was great for business, he said, and the people were great too.

“When people hear about Meetup for the first time and it's outside the context of a tech meetup or moms meetup, they think it must be some dating thing,” Mr. Heiferman said. “Because why the hell would you want to meet people, if not to hook up or get money? Like, why on earth would you want to talk to anybody that you don't already know, if not for sex or money?”

But about six months ago, my curiosity spilled over into the real world. I was scouring the site for a book club for my overworked mom; instead I came across the NYC Freegan Meetup, which was hosting a dumpster diving tour in my neighborhood that evening. My motivation was mostly anthropological. I didn’t mind taking home a few scavenged bagels, but really I wanted to meet these freegans and study their ways. But as my fellow dumpster divers and I delighted over an intact box of Godiva chocolate bars and passed around sleeves of perfectly good saltines, I found myself wondering, could Meetup work for me?

On Tuesday around 8 p.m., a companion and I walked into West 3rd Common, a low-lit bar with red banquettes where about eight people were playing cards on low cherrywood tables. This was the East Village Euchre Club.
The card players, all in their 20s and 30s, included students, a pair of engineers, a Rochester native who was also a member of the Brooklyn Euchre Club, and a long-haired martinet named James, who had brought the cards and made sure conversations didn’t distract players from the hand.

Meetups need at least four attendees to be a good experience, according to Meetup, the company. The norm is for a meetup to start really, really small, with one or two people, and either grow slowly or die out. Occasionally meetups will catch fire, like Start Living in 2012, and attract a bunch of members all at once.

The East Village Euchre Club had 15 people at its first game in September, and has hosted more than a game a week since then, enough to qualify it as a a SMUG, or Successful Meetup Group, in Meetup parlance.
Most of the talk was of euchre, a trump game popular in the Midwest, interspersed with rote introductions. What do you do? When did you move to New York? Three hours later, and we still knew very little about each other, but it was after midnight and the four players at my table were the last patrons in the bar.

Mr. Heiferman started Meetup as a lonely midwestern transplant himself. Quiet, political, and smart, he moved to New York in part to be near his favorite band, Luna, a punk collective with a cult following. “My entire experience of going out to see this band was, I would grab a bite to eat by myself and I would go to the show, and I’d stand there, and I wouldn’t talk to anybody,” he said. “Then I’d filter out, staring at my shoes. Maybe it’s just being shy, or I don’t know what, but there was no context for being allowed to talk to anyone.”

Then in September of 2001, everyone in New York suddenly had permission to talk to each other. The introverted Mr. Heiferman found himself having conversations with his neighbors, and he liked it. A few weeks later, he bought a copy of "Bowling Alone," a chronicle of the disappearance of bowling leagues, church groups and other social clubs, and the accompanying effect on our health and democracy. Every new employee at Meetup is given a copy of "Bowling Alone." In the book, the author cites the Internet as one of the causes of rifts between Americans. Mr. Heiferman and a friend, Matt Meeker, thought the Internet could be a solution.

Even if it hasn’t fully reconstructed the tradition of community in America, 11 years later Meetup is at least a window into hidden corners of the city. It’s also a directory of the best public meeting spaces. The bustling Citicorp Atrium on Lexington and 53rd, which has free wifi, is a favorite. Every white table was occupied with couples, students or homeless men munching sandwiches, as I made my way toward a meetup in the corner on a recent Wednesday evening.

An older gentleman in a Coney Island sweatshirt, possibly in his 60s or 70s, was seated at a table with a plump blonde woman, Brenna, and her soft-spoken co-organizer, David. I introduced myself and scooted over a metal chair as David passed out a detailed worksheet. “NYC Hoarders-No-More Meetup Group,” it said. We were joined by a tattooed hoarder from the Bronx who sleeps in his living room because his bedroom is stuffed to the ceiling with junk, books, and defunct scuba gear. “I’m an atheist,” he said. “But I pray for a fire.”

A few more hoarders showed up as we worked our way through everyone’s updates. Brenna had thrown away about ten New Yorkers, some greeting cards and a notebook with amateur song lyrics that she had found on the sidewalk; Adrian, a former bank vice president, had made significant progress in the kitchen (“The freezer part is cool but the refrigerator part is out of control”).

Every week, the hoarders bring in some debris to discard. As they sorted, we talked about Meetup.

“I think there should be a values score on Meetup so you can put in your values and find meetups based on that,” said a grandfather-aged gentleman with wispy ear hair and rubber bands around his wrist.

“I love Meetup—I’m in a bunch of them,” said the Bronx hoarder. “I co-organize the New York City Depression Meetup. It has 900-some members.”

He joined the site for a scuba diving meetup and was on it for a year before he realized the site had other relevant offerings; now, he regularly checks the site whenever he develops a new interest. “I joined an evolution meetup and the book we read was Richard Dawkins, "The Greatest Show on Earth," and I fell in love with it,” he said. “After that, I started going to atheism meetups.”

David, who is a member of 15 meetup groups, asked him to write down the name of the depression meetup.

Meetup tends to be addicting. “I am very active on Meetup, in that I join a lot of Meetup groups to see what people are doing,” one Start Living in 2012 attendee wrote in an email. “Meetup probably e-mails me an average of five new groups a day for me to look at, and of those I may sign on to receive updates from one or two a week. Off the top of my head, I've been to meetings of a Beekeeping meetup, a Content Strategy meetup, an Artists Accountability Group meetup, and an Online Dating Conference meetup.”

It’s interesting to see what will motivate people to meet up. The site first got traction when the founders started inventing holidays. Mr. Heiferman and Mr. Meeker scoured the Internet for groups and special interest blogs. Then they sent the groups an email about an upcoming made-up celebration—International Pug Lovers Meetup Day, for example—and explained how to join a local meetup or host one. Today, there are 39,427 members of 179 Pug Meetup groups in 149 cities around the world. The biggest demographic on Meetup is moms. Political groups are also big, as are singles groups and New Age-y interests like “energy healing.” Group activities like language practice, sports and networking events are popular. There are even a few pickup artist-themed meetups, like the NYC Wingmen.

On a recent Friday night, I ventured out to an electronic rock show on the Lower East Side for a meetup of NYC Bands for Bands, a sort of networking group of musicians who go to each others’ shows. One musical couple started the group five months ago in order to meet promoters’ demands that their band bring a crowd. But filling up the club is part of it, Micha, a musician in a plaid cap, told me; he comes for the camaraderie. “I can’t imagine myself not going to this for as long as it exists,” he said.

With the glaring exception of the New York Tech Meetup, which has more than 20,000 members, meetups seem to have a natural size limit. Once a group gets large enough, it starts to replicate or “cell divide” according to set patterns, Mr. Heiferman said. “It’s an almost Darwininan ecosystem,” he said. Lance, a stay-at-home father, started the NYC Dads Meetup in 2008 as a group for at-home dads, but it’s expanded. “We’ve got dads of all stripes,” the group’s co-organizer Lance, told me at a NYC Dads drink-up at Heartland Brewery in Union Square. “Guys who lost their jobs, guys who chose the role. We’ve got gay dads joining now.”

The group now has a popular blog, a long list of sponsors, and business cards. But Mr. Heiferman, who is a member of NYC Dads, decided neither it nor any of the other 50 parenting meetups on the Upper West Side was quite right, so he recently started a splinter meetup for parents of children on the aged 9 to 16 months. It now has 29 members.

I felt I had just scratched the surface, even after a week of random meetups. I didn’t get all my first choices. Organizers of the NYC Vinyl Meetup did not email me back quickly enough; I picked the hoarders group over the A Course In Miracles Meetup Group, devotees of the cult classic spiritual text. I got a few rejections. “The 3 p.m. sword balancing is for folks that have 2-3 years of belly dance experience,” wrote the organizer of the Manhattan Tribal ATS Tribal Belly Dance Meetup NYC, somewhat of a relief. I was also excluded from a private dinner held by the Psychedelic and Entheogenic Society, fans of Timothy Leary, although most of their meetups are open.

There was a spate of meetups on Saturday morning—running, walking, breakfast clubs—that I slept too late to check out, opting for Exciting NYC Mandarin Chinese Learners at 2 p.m. at the Chinatown Y. The class was $40. This is not unusual; independent teachers use Meetup to coordinate and advertise classes, and some business-oriented events also charge a fee. Meetup has made this easier by integrating PayPal. Every meetup group organizer pays $10 a month.

For the final outing in my week-long experiment, I caught a nighttime gathering of the New York Parkour Meetup. I was soon in pain from banging my body as I tried to hurdle over stacks of mats while our limber instructor heckled at us to do flips. Luckily, this session took place inside the colorful gymnasium in the Field House at Chelsea Piers, and not at the Sanctuary, the group’s concrete Upper West Side practice area.

I walked out into the icy night exhausted—partly because of the exertion, partly because I had just spent the last week hanging out with strangers. In that moment, I thought, if I never, ever saw another human, it would be too soon. At least until Tuesday. That was Euchre night.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified a New York punk band as Lunar; the band is Luna. Betabeat regrets the error.