Outdoor group takes off

All doctor wanted to do was get some hiking buddies

When Dr. Chris Chao moved back to Raleigh in 2002 he didn't get out much at first. He was eager to revisit the trails and waterways he'd enjoyed as a kid, but seeing patients 60 to 70 hours a week -- not to mention time on call -- didn't leave much time for the general practitioner.

Eventually, he decided that all work and no play was a prescription for grumpiness, so he went looking for playmates. A bit surprised to find no local equivalent of the adventure club he'd belonged to in Charlotte, he turned to the Internet.

That's where he discovered meetup.com, the online community of people trying to hook up with folks of like mind and interests. He couldn't find an existing hiking group in the local community, so he started one. That was August a year ago.

"I thought I'd get maybe 30 or 40 people," Chao says from his office at the Lillington Family Medical Center in Harnett County.

As of Tuesday, his group had 743 members, by far the largest group in Meetup's 299-strong Triangle universe.

"It started as a hobby, as a way to find some fellow hikers," says Chao, 33, who went to Enloe High School before graduating from the N.C. School of Science and Math in 1991. "It's really transformed."

Boy howdy.

In its first few months of existence, the Triangle Hiking and Outdoors Group did one organized hike a month. Between now and next Thursday, seven hikes are scheduled. In the early days the group sponsored hikes that attracted 80 hikers or more, at least four times more people than hike organizers like on most hikes. That led to capping each hike at 10 to 15 people. (And that has led to the lone complaint you hear about Meetup's local hiking group: Once posted, the hikes fill so fast it's nearly impossible to get a slot.) And the group's massive size -- the Raleigh-Durham Democratic Party Meeting Group is a distant second, with 560 members -- is taxing Meetup's software.

"Meetup makes its money on monthly group fees," says Chao (the online service charges $19 a month to run a group site). "It's not to their advantage to have software that accommodates a large group."

The Triangle Hiking and Outing Group's wild success has reached the point, says Chao, that this Meetup success story may be forced to meet elsewhere.

Building community

Meetup.com is the modern equivalent of Floyd's Barber Shop, the town square or the community campfire.

It's where people in the 2000s gather to meet people of like mind and interests. Looking for others who share your passion for movies? Go to meetup.com. Can't find anyone else who plays euchre? Check out meetup.com (the Triangle group has 43 members). A tall girl looking for other tall girls? Meetup is your place.

Even after "tall girls," you don't think there's a group for you? As of Tuesday, Meetup had 4,632 topics. (While we're running the numbers: It also had 14,602 groups and 2.3 million members in 55 countries.)

The three New Yorkers who founded Meetup -- Scott Heiferman, Peter Kamali and Matt Meeker -- got their inspiration from "Bowling Alone," Robert Putnam's 2000 account of how Americans are becoming disconnected. With $800,000 in startup money, they launched the site in 2002. It got a big boost of visibility during the 2004 presidential campaign when Howard Dean used it to mobilize voters (hence the popularity of the Raleigh-Durham Democratic Party group).

The site differs from a lot of online communities in that its goal is to bring people together, face-to-face. And despite a common misconception, Meetup is not the equivalent of the 1970s singles bar. Not that it can't be: Of the 299 groups in the Triangle, at least eight advertise a singles focus in their names.