Meet people who share your interests and you’re bound to become friends with some. Want to meet other Shih Tzus owners? Find a fellow hiker, skier, cyclist, kayaker or climber? Get a pick-up basketball game wherever you are? Start a team? Eat raw food?

Organize a speaker series, and charge attendees? Ask for a donation? Recruit a co-sponsoring organization to attract more attendees? Get a free web site and/or social network site where your new group can also gather online? Or provide the event calender others use to find meetings? Attract media coverage?

Jump on a growing trend. Use extremely user-friendly online services (many are free) to enable people with passionate, shared interests or needs to actually meet in person. Quickly, in some cases. Facilitating face-to-face meetings is one social media trend that continues to grow in popularity while others are beginning to wilt. An Italian comic-turned-blogger/activist (tenth most linked-to blog in the world) created “V-day”, a populist movement via the meetings he organized.

Want to be the popular Connector to arrange gatherings with people who share your interest who live near you? Find a free meeting place, announce your meetings and invite others to come – even charge for attendance, as Edith Yeung does, keeping her overhead next to nil, using PayPal. You can do it all at MeetUp. Next step? Learn from other meeting organizers. Then start an alliance of local groups.

Hear how to enlarge your circle of friends and more in this lively interview with MeetUp’s Andres Glusman.