Scott Heiferman @ Meetup: The Neighbor Who Helped People Find Their Communities

04/18/22 • 32 min

We all know the Internet is a great place for connecting with people anywhere in the world who share the same interests and passions, but can it also be a great place for getting connected with people in your local comunity? The guest in this episode of Web Masters thought it could be. It's Scott Heiferman, founder of Meetup.

What began as a project to help Scott better connect with his New York City neighbors in the wake of the September 11th tragedy quickly grew into the world's biggest online community for finding people in your local area interested in the same things. In this episode of Web Masters, Scott explains how (and why) he started Meetup, how he grew it, and, ultimately, where he sees it going as the world continues moving away from IRL communities and toward a metaverse.

For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Previous Episode

Michael Robertson @ MP3.com: The Entrepreneur Who Got Sued for Making Music Streamable

Hard as it may be to remember now, there was a time when every song we wanted to listen to wasn’t available to stream instantly. Instead, we had to own physical copies. First came the record, then the tape, then the CD.

However, in the late 90s, a new encoding technology was developed that allowed near-CD-quality music to exist in a relatively small file format. The format was called MP3. You’ve surely heard of it.

As MP3s grew in popularity, Michael Robertson decided to buy the domain name “MP3.com.” He wasn’t buying the domain because he was interested in the music industry. He was buying it because he owned a file search engine called Filez.com, and he thought he could use the surging popularity of MP3s to direct traffic to his startup. However, when he launched a website on MP3.com, thousands of people started showing up, and he knew he needed to capitalize on the opportunity.

Ultimately, Michael built a service people could use to stream their music collections online. That doesn’t sound unique today, but Michael launched MP3.com in the late 1990s, and, at the time, no other streaming service existed. The uniqueness of MP3.com made it wildly popular with consumers. It also made MP3.com the target of a lot of animosity from the powerful recording industry.

For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Next Episode

Scott Heiferman @ Fotolog: The Serial Entrepreneur Who Created Instagram Before Instagram

Scott Heiferman was the featured guest on Web Masters Episode #80. In that episode, we heard about how Scott built Meetup, the pioneering website for helping people find their local communities. But that wasn't the only popular website Scott built. He also built Fotolog.

Fotolog was a social media website where people posted and shared their photos online for their friends to view in their feeds. In other words, it was basically Instagram. But it appeared nearly a decade before Instagram.

Fotolog never quite achieved the same global status as Instagram, but it was one of the most popular websites in lots of countries around the world. On this episode of Web Masters, Scott talks about what it was like building Fotolog alongside Meetup and how it grew into a popular cultural phenomenon of its own.

For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.