NetWork II
Scott Heifermann's new startup MeetUp is a free service that helps people who share common interests to gather offline and face to face in almost 550 cities in more than 20 countries around the world. There's nothing listed for the Boston area so far, which makes me wonder how accurate the city count is, but one of the neatest aspects of MeetUp is that the service providers have "hand-picked 11,409 (and growing) good meetup spots -- local cafes, bars, bowling alleys, parks, donut shops, dog-friendly places, videogame displays, etc." Participants vote on where the meetup will convene.

Users can call for their own meetups, characterizing them as monthly or one-time events. Even though it's rather difficult to navigate through where meetups are actually taking place, the service shows a lot of promise in terms of supporting geographically distributed real-time gatherings of like-minded people. Like the site says, "We're on a few hours old." It'll be interesting to see how MeetUp evolves.

Thanks to Common Me.