Y Combinator’s Anyvite Takes On Evite, Keeps Things Simple

Thanks for the recommendations!

I just created a test on anyvite and it was super easy and common-sense. Definitely preferrable to facebook in my opinion. Two comments though:

1. RSVP dropdown is smallish/hard to notice. 2. Background images stretch in an ugly way, at least on my work IE 1024 x 768.

Otherwise, a great site!

For example, most of my friends do not use Facebook.

But all of my friends use email.

The biggest complaints has always been the placement of ads on the invitations and their insistence on drawing you to the site to look at any relevant information (which in turn increases the pageviews and expands their ad inventory). But that's their business model. Few other people have hooked on a more clever way of making money off invitations.

These toys that people make, and yes they are just toys, flame out quite quickly despite people clamoring that Evite's evil and so on. Here's a list of other similar services taking on Evite:

Mypunchbowl (complete event coordination)

Planypus (fuzzy arrangement)

Goovite (simplistic invitation system)

Invitastic (pretty invite templates)

Eventful

Imthere

Madeit

Crush3r (hipster/pretty invite templates)

Partee

Renkoo (friends getting together)

Skobee (dead)

Socializr

Upcoming

Zvents

Pownce can also be considered a similar service. Tack on the current trend of location-aware social apps like Loopt and you have another layer. Those apps are likely where these apps will evolve into. Plus the old standbys of email and phones.

In the end they all do the same thing: you type in info and it gets sent out, sometimes you get to gussy up the invites. The strategic advantage you have is simply size and inertia. If there's going to be anyone that's capable of crushing Evite it would only be Facebook.