Our goal is to actually find people that we think would be a good match for you. With meetup.com you are signing up for an activity. Here we are finding people that you should be friends with and setting up an activity. Like a friend matchmaker.
Every friendship I've ever established has been based on some activity: sharing an office, playing sports, watching a movie, etc. And I don't think I'm unique in this respect.
Meeting a person solely for the person of selecting him or her sounds very specific to dating.
I think your project is interesting and has a lot of potential — I'm just pointing out that, by downplaying activities, you may be expecting a type of socializing that's unnatural to many people, especially if you hope to differentiate yourself from dating sites.
We totally agree. When we make a match of 4 people we send them on an activity. Perhaps we need to make that clearer in the messaging - where would you like us to say something like that?
