cocreation mindshare's List: digital mobilisation

Scott Heifernan unveiled the latest evolution of Meetup.com at TechCrunch Disrupt today. Called Meetup Everywhere, the platform is an easy way for any organization or company to spark meetups everywhere about them. The goal is to turn online followers into an offline movement.

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"The world needs easy ways to connect with one another," said Heifernan. "This is more important than the iPad." Author Seth Godin tried it out, asking readers of his popular blog to organize meetups through the tool. Within 12 hours, 499 cities oganized a Seth Godin meetup on June 14, according to Heifernan.

The goal is to reduce the friction around self-organizing and to enable concurrent meetups in multiple places -- helping ideas spread. According to Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures (a Meetup investor), "a Meetup does not have to be a big fancy event. It is often just a few people (three or four) getting together over a cup of coffee to chat. So don't think you have to run a big party to organize a Meetup."

Perhaps the next iteration of Everywhere should help make Meetups even more impromptu through mobile. A more spontaneous culture is where we are headed. It's become less and less necessary to choose a time and place to meet someone far in advance. Now, you can reach people anytime, anywhere, so planning is less of a need. And now that people are broadcasting their whereabouts to their network through location-based services like Foursquare, friends can "serendipitously" meet up without any forethought whatsoever. Even mass groups can do this smart mob-style, organizing around a particular shared interest. Looking at the success of Tweetups, Town Holler, and 4SQ Streetups,  it seems only natural that Meetup create a mobile platform to "mobilize" (sorry) groups of people quickly and easily.