Posted at The Socialist WebZine
by Matthew Andrews

Since October 2007, the Socialist Party of Boston has been using meetup.com to schedule meetings and events http://www.meetup.com/bostonsocialists. It’s a convenient way to post events and receive RSVPs to anticipate attendance. Meetup is also open to the public and new people regularly find us and “join” us on meetup to keep up with what we’re doing. This month we reached 100 members. It’s worth taking a closer look at our growth on meetup.

In the month of October, 2009, eight new people joined. In November six people joined. This month we are only a little more than half way through December and we’ve already reached a record of eleven new members! In other words, our group has been in existence for 27 months, yet has grown 33% (25/75) in the last three months! That’s more than double our previous rate.

Some of this is due to a conscious effort on the part of Socialist Party organizers to invite existing contacts to join meetup (a free service for non-organizer users). Members and contacts who have been at our periphery are getting more plugged in. But that doesn’t completely explain the growth. Each meetup we schedule brings one to three people we’ve never met before.

Has meetup.com implemented a new marketing strategy that is bringing lots of new people of all stripes to their website? Or are world events driving our sympathizers to get involved? It is certainly apparent that the world is entering a period fraught with crisis. Much more evidence is needed to definitively say that the public is interested in taking a closer look at democratic socialism. I hope you’re as excited as I am to test this possibility by increasing our outreach efforts.

PS. Follow this discussion on the meetup message boards:
http://www.meetup.com/bostonsocialists/messages/boards/thread/8247014/#32606139