[burkaman]

I see a lot of people using https://luma.com/. I'm sure it's not as big as Meetup but it does have a decent community of users, and you can set up pretty much anything with their free plan.

[baggachipz]

I had a good giggle when I opened their homepage and it looks exactly like the Performative-UI library[1] currently in the #1 spot.

[burkaman]

True, I think they were early to the trend though, it's looked like that basically since they launched: https://web.archive.org/web/20210821023119/https://lu.ma/

[gulugawa]

I've looked at Luma and have mixed thoughts. The UI is a massive improvement over Meetup. However, it seems to be following the standard VC funded business model of attracting users and pushing excessive monetization once users are dependent.

[mmarian]

Luma doesn't do discoverability well unfortunately. Also very tech centric.

[burkaman]

I think it depends where you are. SF is all tech stuff but https://luma.com/chicago for example is mostly non-tech.

[mmarian]

Oh, didn't know that. My perspective is from the UK.

[alephnerd]

At least in the Bay, Luma and Partiful are much bigger than Meetup now.

[mmarian]

Interesting. Luma is getting traction in London. Not so much outside.

[alephnerd]

It's about the user bases - Luma and Partiful are almost entirely professionals in careers like Tech, Finance, or Entertainment (especially LA), and the events almost always vet before accepting people.

This helps ensure a better noise to signal ratio that Meetup simply couldn't provide.

[mmarian]

Interesting point, but I personally didn't find Meetup had a noise issue. You could filter for the right stuff, pretty easily. Also I don't see how Luma/Partiful will avoid this problem eventually.