Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com Alternative
radius.toHello HN!
I'm relaunching Radius [1] - far too long after the original Show HN [2] (I'll blame the day job for that).
Radius started out from my frustration with not knowing what was going on around me. The initial plan was to "show all and every type of event" from big to small, but over time I narrowed the focus to communities, groups, events, and helping people connect through them.
The initial Show HN gave me 150+ comments (surprising, looking back, given how terrible the plain Bootstrap UI was...) with a huge amount of useful feedback and feature requests. I've spent the time since then working through that, along with additional requests from groups using Radius, and it finally feels ready for a proper relaunch.
I've also recently added "Activities" [3] - which are lightweight events, independent of groups, intended to help people find others to do things with - for example:
> John is going for a cycle and a coffee in New York at 10am
People can join and vote for a time that works for them.
I've got a bunch of ideas for where to go next with this, including things like open sourcing and federation, but those are for another day!
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
P.S. it's built with Ruby on Rails, for those interested. I highly suspect it would have taken me 2 more years to get to this point without Rails!
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40717398
[3] https://radius.to/documentation/activities/post-an-activity
I really appreciate the work and polish put into the project, but I would always think why would someone switch from direct communication (WhatsApp groups, Facebook groups..etc) to a dedicated platform. I know it has a lot of other features that might be useful to coordinate events, but in the age of AI and social media addiction people are already mentally statured to remember another less popular platform. going B2B I think would be smarter move to organize professional events.
> social media addiction people are already mentally statured
Yeah, I don't disagree! In a way, I'm trying to combat that by facilitating people actually getting together in the real world, through events, activities and shared interests. I've deliberately not allowed free-form text posts or DMs between users, so it doesn't just turn into another social media feed.
> why would someone switch from direct communication (WhatsApp groups, Facebook groups..etc)
Yup, I think it depends on the size and nature of the group. A meetup between friends probably doesn't need a web presence at all, and WhatsApp would be perfectly adequate.
For larger clubs or public groups that want to attract new people, though, there's value in having somewhere discoverable with proper event pages, recurring events, RSVPs, waitlists, calendars, etc., so that's who this is for.
congrats on the relaunch! I've never used meet up platform before, I usually use facebook groups to find my badminton play friends.
Congrats on the relaunch!
why should I use this versus luma or something similar?
Thanks very much!
So I think Luma is mostly focused on beautiful event pages (which they do well) and event calendars rather than the community/group itself being the core unit. In that way, we're more of a competitor to Meetup.com. I don't think a local cycling club would use Luma to organise a weekly cycle, for example.
Compared with Meetup, I'm trying to keep Radius a bit simpler and more flexible for organisers. Pricing is a flat £12/month for Pro groups, and things like our Events API [1], embeddable event widgets [2], calendar subscriptions, guest RSVPs and waitlists are all available for free groups as well.
There's also the Activities [3] feature I mentioned - not super applicable to you if you're an organiser but regular users might find it useful. You don't need to create or run a group at all and can just say "I'm going cycling Saturday, anyone want to join?" and see who nearby is interested. AFAIK, I don't think Meetup or Luma etc have anything like this.
[1] https://radius.to/documentation/api-reference/create-events
[2] https://radius.to/documentation/organizer-tools/embed-widget
[3] https://radius.to/documentation/activities/post-an-activity
I think it makes it too complicated to post a meetup request.
It should be as easy as here on HN:
Hello! I think Hamburg in Germany needs a good solopreneur meetup. If anyone is interested, let me know!
This is what I would have posted, but I got stuck somewhere along the long signup process.
Makes me wonder if an RSS feed with a namespace extension for a GPS coordinates field would be enough, with a basic Web page client with a radius limited with a reasonable default based on threshold of results and user adjustable.
What's the point in showing me events half way across the country? Is there a narrow-down filter available?
The problem with this is not technology- its the lack of interesting meetups i want to join in my city
Eg meetup at least has critical mass of users and meetups
Seeing the activity flow made this click for me. I like that someone can just say “I’m cycling next week,” let people join, and figure out the time afterwards instead of creating a fully formed event upfront.
That feels meaningfully different from Meetup.
Curious which has been the better wedge so far: bringing existing groups and their members over, or creating new local connections through individual activity posts?