The concept might be appealing at first blush but I can't see this doing anything that meetup.com and craigslist don't do.
I spend a fair amount of time looking around for prospective partners and teachers in a variety of activities (including martial arts). The problem isn't that people can't find each other. The problem is most people don't have much commitment to pursuing an activity on their own. If two people are in a city looking for activity partners, they'll find them. But in the Bay Area, a large metropolitan area, you'd be lucky to find a committed activity partner for anything but the absolutely most common activities.
Just think, it's easier to be posting for a prospective partner than actually practicing the activity. So the number of ads one finds on meetup.com and craigslist is probably greater than the number of people you can actually get to practice with you consistently (I have two meetup groups - membership is consistently 20x attendance. Sure, if I put in a lot of effort, I might boost that but it's not a money making gig for me, so why should I? I don't mind having five people show up but this relatively low turn-outs is still a measure of the difficulty in getting people committed to an activity).
Even more, just about everyone is in alternative activity class (yoga, painting, whatever) has been recruited by the teacher. Very few people actively keep a look-out for a special teacher for any extended length of time (I think I know this because I'm one of those very few people). So the model of "connecting people" doesn't work.
There are many ways they could be improving on Craigslist:
- More keywords in the posting template
- a semi usable search system (this alone outclasses craigslist by 10 years)
- Less spam
- An API for integrating with affinity sites
- Better integration with maps
I spend a fair amount of time looking around for prospective partners and teachers in a variety of activities (including martial arts). The problem isn't that people can't find each other. The problem is most people don't have much commitment to pursuing an activity on their own. If two people are in a city looking for activity partners, they'll find them. But in the Bay Area, a large metropolitan area, you'd be lucky to find a committed activity partner for anything but the absolutely most common activities.
Just think, it's easier to be posting for a prospective partner than actually practicing the activity. So the number of ads one finds on meetup.com and craigslist is probably greater than the number of people you can actually get to practice with you consistently (I have two meetup groups - membership is consistently 20x attendance. Sure, if I put in a lot of effort, I might boost that but it's not a money making gig for me, so why should I? I don't mind having five people show up but this relatively low turn-outs is still a measure of the difficulty in getting people committed to an activity).
Even more, just about everyone is in alternative activity class (yoga, painting, whatever) has been recruited by the teacher. Very few people actively keep a look-out for a special teacher for any extended length of time (I think I know this because I'm one of those very few people). So the model of "connecting people" doesn't work.