Living

The eight were all members of the BCN Photography Club, and they gathered at the Encants market on a Saturday morning, cameras in hand. They had met through Meetup.com, a popular resource for people searching for others who share their interests. “It’s the only time I’ve ever met anyone off the internet,” smiled Birkett, just before heading off into the crowd to grab some snaps. “At least we have something to talk about—wide angle lens or telephoto?”

Heidi Hanson from Seattle, Washington, who just arrived in Barcelona five weeks ago and found Meetup.com on Facebook, said she was pleased with the results. “It was hard to explain to my friends the concept of Meetup.com. It is a meet-up group, not a hook-up group. It is not a dating site.”

Meetup.com, whose motto is ‘real groups make a real difference’, is an online social networking portal that brings people physically together through common interests. It is simple: register, type in your location, enter your interests and you will find a group of people meeting up nearby. If there are no relevant groups, it only requires a few clicks to establish one and keep it alive.

“You can’t be too precious about the group,” said Lee Harris, a professional photographer and the founder of the photography group. “It is very democratic. It has metamorphosed into something really fun. It is not a class, there is no leader. It is super laid-back and every time you come, you meet new people.”

Meetup.com was founded in 2002, in New York City, by Scott Heiferman after reading a book entitled Bowling Alone, a study by Harvard sociologist Dr. Robert Putnam that theorised why civic participation in America had dropped to an all-time low (four percent in 2000 versus 40 percent in 1960). This book, plus the shock of September 11th and the ever-growing alienation of technology, led Heiferman and a team of programmers to build a tool to help people meet up.

It seems to work. “My New Year’s resolution was to meet new friends, try new things, get out of the house more. The only downside of a traveller’s life is missing friends, people to hang out with. I want to meet people that are into things that I enjoy, and Meetup fills that hole,” explained Marisa Lopez, from New York City, another member of the photography club.