She was glad to find a site that, in effect, did all the organizing work. Kathy Gregersen, 46, an office worker in Amarillo, Texas, used Meetup to get in touch with other hockey fans in her area, especially those who followed the local leagues. "We have Elvis meetups we don't have skinny Elvis meetups versus fat Elvis meetups." "We can't slice and dice topics too much because it would cannibalize it," he said. The topics, however, must be sufficiently broad. Other than a prohibition on topics about sex, or those that could be discriminatory and hurtful, "the bar to have a meetup topic isn't all that high," said Myles Weissleder, the company's vice president of communications. Meetups take place in 604 cities in 45 countries, and the company says it has more than 774,000 registered users. They run the gamut from interest in the Flat Earth Society to the Freemasons. The site started with 400 topics picked by the Meetup staff now there are more than 2,350 subjects, with users suggesting new ones every day. "The most important social relationships need to be nurtured in the real world." "The Internet is a fantastic social and communication tool, but it doesn't yet give you the pleasure of a true face-to-face meeting," he said. "That's the genius of Meetup, to help people find connections," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a nonprofit research organization that looks at the Internet's social impact. For instance, the Elvis Meetup Day is the first Tuesday of the month at 7 p.m. Meetups on a particular topic occur on the same day in communities all over the world. Money also comes in from organizations that benefit from a link to Meetup, and from users who opt to pay for a membership with more features. There is a fee to be listed as a Meetup site, one of three revenue sources for the New York-based company. If there is, they must register (for free) to obtain the time and location of the meetup at least five people must sign up for a meetup to take place. The site works like this: Visitors pick a topic, then enter their zip code to see if there's a face-to-face meetup at a public venue near them. He is quick to point out that political groups are only a fraction of what draws people to Meetup, and topics range widely, from knitting to the burlesque to raising grandchildren.
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