Newsweek

In the May 29 issue of Newsweek, Meetup CEO Scott Heiferman was interviewed by Steven Levy for the Enterprise Q & A section.

It's a wonderful double-page spread -- "See You Offline" -- that can be found in all subscriber copies of the news weekly.

You can read it online here or by clicking "Permanent Link" below.

See You Offline

Scott Heiferman saw the Internet as a way to get people off the Internet—and into his groups.

Newsweek

May 29, 2006 issue - While rabid supporters of Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign were among the first to discover the virtues of Meetup.com—the Internet company that helps groups of strangers organize monthly powwows at local watering holes—they did not prove to be the last. The company now has more than 2 million people showing up for sessions that focus on hundreds of subjects. Among the most popular: Chihuahua owners, knitters, investors, stay-at-home moms and ghost hunters (!). Such camaraderie edifies Meetup.com's 33-year-old founder Scott Heiferman, a dot-com veteran who read Robert Putnam's lament for lost social groups, "Bowling Alone," and vowed to use the tools of tech to revive the "Happy Days" -ish spirit of bowling leagues and ladies' auxiliaries. He recruited the likes of Bill Bradley and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar for his board, and recently welcomed eBay as an investor. On our meetup with Heiferman (conducted, alas, not face-to-face but on the telephone), he discussed the decision—necessary to keep the business going—to charge his groups a $19-a-month fee (either swallowed by the leader or split among participants), as well as his allergy to Web 2.0 hype.

LEVY: A year ago you changed from free service to one that charged your Meetup groups a fee. What was the impact?

HEIFERMAN:
We almost instantly lost half our activity when we started the fee. That was pretty damn painful. Most of last year we sort of crawled up, but this year we've just exploded. Now there are more people than ever RSVP'ing for meetups. Also, after each meeting we religiously poll members and ask them to rate it on a scale from 1 to 5. Before there was a fee, the average rating was 3.8. After the fee, the average rating is a 4.2.

What advice would you give the next company that tries to make that shift?
You can't communicate enough with your base. I thought we were doing enough, but we didn't do enough. No one's going to be happy when you charge a fee, but nothing shows that people love your product as much as them paying a little bit for it.

Your other revenue is Google ads on your home page—how much does that bring?
It's about 5 percent of our revenue. The whole world is not going to be funded by Google ads. You can get swept up into thinking that this magical idea of advertising will solve everything, but at the end of the day, something has to pay for stuff. The best products are often funded by the people who use them.

Now that you're partners with eBay, are you contemplating using that company's services like Skype or PayPal?
Plans are in the works to help each other out. But, to be very direct, Meetup is all about offline. Meetup's fundamental idea is that we're all living, spending too much time, in front of screens.

Since Meetup was so closely associated with the Dean campaign, do you worry that there's a feeling that Meetup has a Democratic tilt?
That's partially a myth. There was a point where actually the conservative meetups became bigger than the meetups on the left. Running the risk of insulting [Dean campaign manager] Joe Trippi, I would actually go so far as to say the Heritage Foundation was a smarter Meetup user than anyone else. They were doing a phenomenal job of pushing these conservative meetups all around the country. We just take a nonpartisan stance. Our mission is to have Meetup everywhere about everything, when people really have the power to organize about whatever they care about.

What's your view of the recent buzz about "Web 2.0," which is the term for the current Internet boom based on new technology tools and user-generated content?
People don't want to generate content. They want to solve problems in their lives. They want support, they want help. I think that it would be helpful for people who are making new things to really just get back to the basic Maslow hierarchy of needs. What is it that people really need in their lives, and how does the technology help people to focus?

You started Meetup with a conscious idea that generating these physical gatherings would be beneficial to society. As a CEO, how do you balance social good with the bottom line?
I would venture to guess that most of the most successful companies fundamentally are doing social good. I was at a conference in London recently where there was a lot of talk about how companies should give philanthropically. That's the completely wrong attitude. I think that the most successful companies are actually creating good, whether it's the garbage-collection company or Meetup.

What's the weirdest meetup that's ever come to your attention?
Dumpster-diving meetups are very popular. There's pagan parenting, and other ostracized groups. But I have a hard time answering that question—after doing this for a few years nothing is strange anymore.