The Poynter Institute

Al's Morning Meeting, Monday Edition

By Al Tompkins

I have been playing with a site for a few days that I want to pass along. I will be interested to see how useful this really proves to be for you. This site seems to be a step toward helping journalists find real people who deeply care about a range of topics.

The site is called "Meetup," and it claims to be a place that will help you figure out how to get connected with people who meet about... well, just about everything. For example, if you want to find out where Witches meet in Tampa, they have a listing, or if you want to know where people who are interested in knitting meet in New York, there are 51 people signed up and willing to talk to each other.

The site spokesperson, told me, "Meetup helps create real-world gatherings in local establishments (cafes, restaurants) on just about any topic (breast cancer survivors, pug lovers, stay-at-home moms, BookCrossers, Atheists... and 700+ other topics/interests), in over 540 cities in 31 countries. In the six months since our launch, over 120,000 people signed in to meet up on one topic or another -- all without a dime spent on advertising. Meetup can be a GREAT resource for journalists to identify topic trends per city, as well as the rank of cities per topic."

For example, the Top 10 Meetup topics in Portland, Ore.:

LiveJournal (150 members) next event: Tuesday, Jan. 28 @ 8 p.m.
BookCrossing (127 members) next event: Tuesday, Jan. 14 @ 7 p.m.
Slashdot (112 members) next event: Thursday, Jan. 23 @ 7 p.m.
Witches (78 members) next event: Tuesday, Jan. 28 @ 7 p.m.
Pagan (45 members) next event: Wednesday, Feb. 12 @ 7 p.m.
Fark (40 members) next event: Saturday, Jan. 11 @ 6 p.m.
Weblogger (37 members) next event: Wednesday, Jan. 15 @ 7 p.m.
Ultima (32 members) next event: Monday, Feb. 3 @ 8 p.m.
Ex-Jehovah's Witness (29 members) next event: Saturday, Feb. 1 @ 5 p.m.
Knitting (24 members) next event: Wednesday, Jan. 15 @ 8 p.m

And the top cities for knitters are:

New York City (51)
LA -- Santa Monica (40)
Philadelphia, Penn. (35)
San Diego, Calif. (31)
Boston, Mass. (29)
Washington, D.C. (27)
Oakland-Alameda, Calif. (26)
Portland, Ore. (24)
Newark -- Jersey City, N.J. (23)
Vancouver, Canada (20)

Link: http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=2&aid=16874