In the aftermath of the 9/11, Scott Heiferman felt that something had changed in the way people interacted together. They would start to care about each other and talk in the streets while neighbours would meet for the first time after years of living in the same street. He felt that most of the time, people didn’t even came across each other while living in the same area as they didn’t have the opportunity for. He then decided to found Meetup.com, a website that would “use the internet to help people get off the internet” and connect communities together. There we were, 9 months later, the baby of the 9/11 was born.
Meetup.com is a platform where you can register and attend any kind of events. The users don’t pay any registration or participation fee, making the service free for 90% of its users. On the other hand, organizers of meetings have to pay a premium, making it an unusual freemium model as Meetup does not even run ads. However, the main revenue for the organizers themselves is the recognition and fame to be part of the “organizer community” as well as the possible future benefits generated by the meetings. In accordance with the principle explaining the success of collective intelligence systems, money is thus not the only reason behind the success of Meetup. Furthermore, all the meetups are completely independent, giving all creativity and decisional power to the users.
Consumer Value Creation 