WeWork to acquire social networking company Meetup

WeWork is acquiring Meetup, a social network that connects people who want to meet up and pursue a common hobby.

The acquisition is another step in the co-working company’s planned transformation into a “physical social network” active in a broad range of community-centric real estate and software ventures. “It’s like a magical puzzle that fits together,” Meetup’s co-founder Scott Heiferman told the New York Times.

Meetup facilitates around 15,000 meetings per day, according to the firm, and around 100,000 of them have taken place in WeWork spaces to-date. According to Heiferman, Meetup will continue to operate as-is, but may become integrated into WeWork’s offerings the way Instagram is into Facebook’s (where users can link their accounts).

The Times reported that Meetup’s general counsel David Pashman was friendly with an unnamed WeWork executive, and that the first meeting between Heiferman and WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann took place in August.

Last week, news broke that WeWork invested in the women-only co-working company The Wing, which took in a total of $32 million in a Series B funding round. And in October, WeWork acquired the coding bootcamp Flatiron School. As The Real Deal exclusively reported last week, WeWork is working on a push into retail. It’s also reportedly considering raising hundreds of millions in additional funding on the Israeli bond market.  [NYT] — Konrad Putzier