Meetup.com
By James Simpson
Potomac News
July 18, 2007

Everyone’s had those experiences, where you are hundreds of miles away form home and run into someone you know. It might be out camping with your family and you meet an old friend from high school, or at an annual convention and you actually find out the person you are talking to lives in the same neighborhood.

Ironically, even with our increasing population, meeting people that you intentionally want to meet seems to be more difficult.

Some smart people figured this out a while back and created online dating websites. The most popular of course is match.com, but there are many to choose from nowadays. For those who are unfamiliar with this internet service, it allows individuals with similar interests to contact each other, communicate, and eventually meet for a date. This means that a person, who has many of the qualities you are looking for, but you may never have coincidentally come across due to the fact that they live miles away, is now someone you have the opportunity to know and possibly fall in love with.

The same thing happened when some equally smart people thought that there must be a way to use present day technology to expand the potential market for people selling items. Yard sales typically don’t bring in a lot of cash, mostly because you are not selling stuff to a person who is looking for a particular item. Ebay, and several sites like it, now allow people to reach a global marketplace in the hope that someone is out looking for a particular item that you are interested in selling. A real win-win for both buyer and seller.

Last year I was told about a very cool site that is regional and combined a number of features that allowed people, who would otherwise not be ale to locate each other, to post job listing, personal ads, rooms for rent, items for sale, etc. The benefit to this site, called craigslist.com, is that there is no charge for posting or becoming a member. Of course, due to its open nature that is more risk involved, but all-in-all people seem to use the site quite a bit. (On a side note, one of my favorite sections is called “best-of-craigslist”. This is where the best postings, usually out of the rants-and-raves section, are archived for posterity. Of course, some of these can be rather … ummm … colorful. You have been forewarned.)

All of the aforementioned sites are great and have a lot of benefits, not to mention bringing people together who might otherwise never find each other. And I suspect that there are numerous other “community” type website services that could be created. However, the one I am going to personally rave about today is called MEETUP.COM.

Over a year ago a friend kept trying to get me to join Meetup. She would send emails with links to particular groups and tell me how much fun she was having attending different events. At the time my head was elsewhere (which is one of the reasons that my writing has been sporadic over the past year).

Well, a couple months ago I finally decided to give the site a try, and I must say … I am disappointed that I hadn’t taken her advice and joined over a year ago.

To begin with, this site is FREE, unless you chose to “organize” your own group (more on that later). The uniqueness of Meetup is that it allows people with similar interests or hobbies to find each other so they can arrange times and locations to, well, meetup and share with each other these common pastimes or pursuits.

There are groups that get together to play boardgames, go hiking or campaign, play sports, knit, or simply socialize, the list goes on and on. Virtually any interest one might have is covered. And here is the really cool thing; if it isn’t already created … you can start a group up yourself. It’s less than a hundred dollars every six months. And even if a particular group does exist, and you want one closer to your home or with a slightly different twist, you can start another one up.

Ok … shameless plug here. I recently started a new group myself. It’s called the “Northern Virginia Christian Singles Meetup Group”. We are having our first WOODBRIDGE area meetup on Tuesday, July 31st. This is one of the coolest “free” online services I have ever come across! If my new group isn’t one that appeals to you then log on to meetup.com and search for something that does. I am certain that you will find something of interest. There are tons of meetups, and it is a great way to get out and participate in social activities with others. I understand 4 out of 5 doctors recommended additional physical activity for couch potatoes. Give it a try, you will love it!

James Simpson lives in Lake Ridge.