Question:  has Meetup solved the problem?

Nope.  Putnam says we don't need to go to concerts thanks to CDs.  A great loss.  We do it all alone.  How can the internet be used to build "real" face to face ties to other people?  These other communities are fictional, because they're virtual.

And then the IRC channel learned that the SCT had taken cert. in Grokster, and we lost focus.