Updates to New Meetup
Hello all,
Since the launch of New Meetup, we have been listening to as much feedback as we can, whether it be on our message boards or on UserVoice. I realize we have not been as communicative as we should have been regarding our next steps, but we wanted to make sure we had an opportunity to hear from everyone, and it takes more than a few days for all Organizers to check in on the site and have an opportunity to give us feedback.
Over the past few days, you may have noticed a flurry of enhancements, bug fixes, and changes rolling out in a fairly steady stream. On Monday alone, we had over 8 launches to the site pushing literally hundreds of changes. Most all of these are directly driven by feedback from Organizers. While we don’t have plans to completely revert the changes from New Meetup, we do realize that we didn’t get it completely right, and are committed to fixing the legitimate problems and complaints we are hearing from you. In order to keep you as informed as possible, we want to list out the larger of those changes here.
First though, I want to address one big misconception that I have heard more than a few times. We in no way set out to indicate that we are devaluing Organizers. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. I strongly believe (and this sentiment is shared by all at Meetup HQ) that Organizers are the SOLE reason Meetup is such an awesome platform. The work you all do is amazing and is not something that technology or flashy design can ever hope to replicate. I completely recognize that in some cases, we made mistakes that may have made it feel like this wasn’t the case. For that I apologize.
Now, that said, here are the bigger things we have changed in past few days, as well a bit about some of what is coming. Over the past few days:
- We brought back the link to your calendar to every page. We assumed that by moving the calendar to the home page of your group that that would be enough visibility, and we were wrong. Now you will see a permanent link to the calendar in the group information box on the left side of every page on your group. Combined with putting the calendar directly on the group home page, it should have more visibility now than ever before.
- We brought back roles and titles to the RSVP list. These should never have been removed, and honestly, it was a bit of an oversight that they disappeared.
- Similarly, we are bringing back the list of event hosts for a Meetup. They are already almost completely back on your event pages, and should be added to your group home pages shortly (showing these on the group home page is something that did not exist prior to New Meetup). Also, the ‘helped plan’ copy is for the most part gone from the site.
- We shortened the list of Meetups on your group home page in order to pull the activity feed higher up the page. We hope to down the road add ability for the Organizer to set the exact count of Meetups to show, but for now, this should help. Similarly, we cleaned up the language and design shown on group home pages when you have no Meetups at all on your calendar. It is now much more subtle.
- We cleaned up the welcome email your members get when they join your group. If you have something written, we will not add any additional language to the email.
- The auto-comments that were showing when you made edits to the Meetups are now removed if the edits were made by Organizers. Organizers now also have the ability to delete any of those auto-comments made by members.
- We brought back ‘How to find us’ on the event page. That should not have been removed, and it is now back.
Some things that are coming soon:
- Bringing back photos tied to the event page. We never actually showed these photos on the group home page, but we are now working to find a good way to do so. We also are looking to make this feature much better than it was in the past, and will likely allow multiple photos to show tied to the Meetup.
- We are adding more controls to the HTML editor for the event page. Things like changing colors/sizes of the font and adding photos to the description should get much easier.
- RSVPs will be added back to the activity feed.
- We are making the ‘Featured Meetup’ work better, including adding the ability to un-feature and to have more than one featured at any time.
This is just a small list, and as always, we will continue to make improvements to the site. We will continue to make these changes with one goal, in support of our mission: to spark Meetups everywhere about most everything. As I said, we firmly believe that the success of Organizers is (and always will be) pivotal to achieving that goal.
Please continue to let us hear your feedback. While we as a relatively small team can’t respond to everything, we are listening and paying attention to everything. You can continue to post your product suggestions here.
Going forward, you can track big updates via our blog and smaller updates over the next week here.
Again thanks for all your feedback. I’m sorry that the last week was bumpy and painful for some folks out there. That was certainly not our intention, and we are doing everything we can as quickly as we can to help resolve some of this pain.
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