Thousands of Wellingtonians use Meetup.com to make new friends, explore hobbies, and even build new communities. So what’s the deal with the site – and is it for you?    

When Scott Heiferman built a website to help his New York neighbours come together in the wake of 9/11, he expected a number of things to come from it. But not, one imagines, a zombie flash mob. Still, that’s what he got, thanks to the enthusiastic embrace of his site Meetup.com by the thousands of Wellingtonians who use it on a weekly basis.

Heiferman had been a tech entrepreneur with a string of successful businesses behind him – including the online ad agency itraffic – when those planes crashed into the twin towers. In the aftermath of the disaster, he was struck by the way people connected with each other. “For a little bit there, New York became a pretty friendly place,” he told a conference several years ago. “I talked to more neighbours in the days after 9/11 than I had in recent years of living in New York, having moved to New York from Iowa, a few years earlier.” The result is a global phenomenon that has drawn in over 11 million people in 45,000 cities.

Read the full article here: FishHead – Meetup.com – January 2013