PJCNET

If you would like to join up with or meet up with a group of like minded people about any subject near or in your local area throughout the world, then meetup.com is certainly for you.

I live in Birmingham in the UK and there’s currently 81 serious meet-up groups in my area and growing, these range from various social groups to much more specialised interest groups. What makes meetup.com good is that it’s totally free for people to find a meet up group, while meet up organisers have to pay a relatively small fee. This means that only people who are serious about starting a meet up group usually create one and they are rarely left to become dormant. The price doesn’t price serious people out at between $12 and $19 a month at the time of writing (between £7.55 and £11.94 British pounds) which is very affordable by virtually anyone who genuinely wants to start a meet up group. What’s more, with one subscription you can run organise up to 3 meet up groups at once. For full details of the costs, please click here.

Most meet up groups are free to join, although groups can optionally charge membership if they wish to do so and this can also be managed using the meetup.com system. Some groups are open to all, while others are private by a short application only. Most private groups will allow you to join as long as you show that you are genuinely interested in the subject of hand and/or you have relevant experience, they are mainly trying to stop time wasters. When applying, you may find that 255 characters for some of the answers to the form isn’t enough, if that’s the case, I recommend you also send a friendly email to the organiser to support your application.

I’ve found some great meet up groups in my local area and I recommend that everyone spends a just few minutes to search the database as you’ll never know what you’ll find and it might even change your life for the better. If you have a specific interest and there’s not a current meet up group in your area, you can ask to be informed of new groups matching your interests in future.

If you have a specific interest and there’s no meet up groups already in your area, then why not organise your own meet up group? It’s quick, easy and relatively cheap to do and judging from the membership in the other groups, it’s very effective at advertising your meet up group.

When you join a meet up group, advanced full interaction is available which includes a calender of events, a message board, a mailing list, polls, files, photos and much more. When a meet-up is organised, members are invited and can then decide whether they are definitely attending, maybe attending or if they cannot attend. You can also send personal messages to other members and each member can set-up their own personal profile like on all good quality social networking sites. Most meet up groups become friendly interactive communities.

WARNING: Just one small word of advice, if you are meeting up with a new group using meetup.com or any other on-line network, you should always take reasonable precautions. I recommend you meet in a public place. If possible don’t go alone and let other people know where you’ve gone and what time you are due back. Under 18’s should always be accompanied by responsible adults and it should be remembered that meeting strangers isn’t without risk. Please also see my legal disclaimer below this article. Stay safe, enjoy and make new friends!

I thoroughly recommend you take a look as you’ve got absolutely nothing to lose and a lot to gain:

Legal Disclaimer

You are strongly advised to take adequate precautions when meeting strangers you’ve first contacted on-line, PJCNET cannot and will not be held responsible, nor will we be held liable in any way what-so-ever for any problems occurring from meeting up, no matter what the cause. We don’t advise under 18’s to meet strangers on-line at all unless at least supervised and accompanied by relevant adults who agree to take full responsibility if anything should go untoward. Anyone who chooses to meet people they’ve first contacted on-line do so entirely at your own risk and have been warned. The logo used at the end of the article above remains copyright of www.meetup.com and is used only to advertise the website with no profits going to PJCNET, if the website owner however prefers me to remove this logo, please contact me and I will remove it immediately without question. This article is my own personal opinion. My full legal disclaimer applies to this article, any comments and all other articles on this website. Best of luck!

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