Meetups you can float, offers from the shops you use, and a search that finally understands “rijbewijs”
Three things reached the app in September that never got their own post: Meetups with a “maybe” stage, Offers from local businesses, and a chat room for every event. Version 2.10 adds a proper search for Experiences, a “since you were last here” line on Home, badges, and a weekly digest — with a switch for each.
September was busy and we were bad at saying so. Two features shipped in the app without a word here, and a third — a chat room that comes free with every event — went out as a line in a release note. This post catches up on all three, and then walks through what is new in version 2.10, which is in the stores from today.
🙋 Meetups: “I would come if enough people would”
Most gatherings never happen because nobody wants to be the one who books a table for twelve and eats alone. Events on Namaste were built for the confident case — a festival, a fixed date, a venue that is already paid for. A Meetup is for the other case.
When you post one, you can mark it tentative. It goes into the feed like any event, but instead of “Going” people tap “Interested”. You watch the number. When it looks like a real evening, you confirm it — and everyone who was interested hears that it is on. If it never gets there, you call it off, or the date arrives and the app quietly calls it off for you. Nobody turns up to a meetup nobody confirmed.
Interested is not Going
A different button, a different promise. You can take interest back; the organiser sees both numbers.
Confirm or call off
Two buttons, organiser only. Both tell the people who were waiting — under the same notification setting as event reminders.
It lapses on its own
A tentative meetup whose date arrives unconfirmed is called off automatically. The feed never shows a maybe that is already in the past.
Its own chip
What’s On has a Meetups filter next to Events and Offers, so the maybes are easy to find and easy to skip.
💬 Every event now has a room
Say you are going to something and you are in its chat. Not a group you have to find and join — the room is the event: “where are you parking”, “I am at the back table”, “does anyone have a spare ticket”. Leave the RSVP and you leave the room. For a tentative meetup, being interested is enough to get in, because the organiser floated it precisely to talk to the people thinking about it.
The room is a Group underneath, which is why it already does everything a group does: live messages, photos, replies that quote, mute, reports, and your anonymity setting. It does not show up in the Groups directory — you reach it from the event — and it archives itself a week after the event ends, with a warning the day before, so nobody is left talking into an empty room.
🏷️ Offers, from the businesses you already use
A three-week “back to school” deal from a restaurant is not an event, and for a while it had to pretend to be one: a single evening at 10:00, an RSVP button, the flyer cropped to the middle. Now a business that has a listing in the Yellow Pages can post an Offer — a date range, a booking link, no attendee count, and an OFFER badge instead of an EVENT one. The flyer is shown whole, portrait or not.
Offers appear in What’s On (there is an Offers chip), on the business’s own page under “Current offers”, and on Home while they run. They are location-bound like everything else, and they go through the same review as an event before they are visible. If you run a business, you can post them from a laptop at namaste.community/biz — more on that here.
✨ New in 2.10
Version 2.10 is about the thing you were looking for and the thing you missed.
Search Experiences properly
Type “drivers license”, “rijbewijs” or “permis” and get the driving-licence stories, ranked by how well they match rather than by date. Titles count more than bodies. Same search on the web at namaste.community/stories.
Photos on the cards, and faster
Experience cards show their photo — resized for the list, so a page of them loads in a fraction of the data it used to.
Since you were last here
Home opens with one line: what appeared within 25 km since your previous visit — new questions, events, listings, groups. Tap a chip to go there. Nothing new, no line.
Badges, on your own screen
Answer questions, host events, start a group, write an Experience, review a business: each earns a small badge on your Account screen, with the next one and how far off it is. Never shown beside anonymous posts.
📬 A weekly digest — and a switch for it
On Sunday mornings the app can send you one note: what appeared near you this week, what your own posts drew (replies, votes, RSVPs), and the newest Experience in your country. It is silent when there is nothing to say. Two more prompts arrived alongside it, and each one has its own switch under Account → Notifications:
- 1
Weekly digest
Sunday, once. A push if you have the app, an email if you only have the web. - 2
“Can you answer this?”
A question near you that has sat unanswered for a day is put to a handful of members who have answered before — at most one ask a day, one round per question. - 3
“Write it up”
When you mark an answer to your own question as helpful, one nudge to turn what you went through into an Experience, with the title already filled in. The next person searching for “rijbewijs” will thank you.
All three are off in one tap
🌍 One more thing: the word “Belgium”
The store listings used to say “expats in Belgium”. Namaste has been country-scoped for a while — your radius is yours, your country is the widest the app will ever look, and members in the Netherlands, Germany or Ireland see their own neighbours, not Antwerp. The description now says so.
As ever: if something is broken, missing or feels off, the feedback form and WhatsApp both reach a human.
Found this useful? Pass it on.
Someone who’s just moved will thank you for it.
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