InviteUp : Easiest Invite Ever | Hacker News Reader

InviteUp : Easiest Invite Ever

inviteup.com

32 pointskirubakaran47 comments

Not sure why there's so much complaining going on here. This is brilliant. You're Doing It Right.

Yes, it's too simple. But you're erring on the right side of complexity. Well done. Be careful to not lose that vision as you iterate on this idea.

Some ideas for features:

1. Let me specify the time/date/location/description of the event when I create it. Then let users view a map, download an ics, add it to their yahoo/google calendar, etc.

2. It's clean and simple, but it kind of looks like ass. Get a designer to give it some visual love.

3. Let me enter a list of email addresses, and email them. Or let me enter a list of phone numbers, and you send SMSes.

4. Post to twitter/facebook/etc. It would be cool to be able to broadcast an event to all my friends. But if you're going to let it post to twitter, you'll need to make those urls much shorter.

Good points. Thanks.

The first half of #1 was my first complaint.

Okay, what the hell am I agreeing to show up for? Oh, I don't really know. Someone can tell me that information, but I can't really refer back to it.

The second half might be erring on the side of complex because it is trying to target certain technology, rather than staying "pure" and being just about spreading info on a web interface. If I wanted to keep it simple, I would just have a description where a date and time could be included in plain text.

Not sure why there's so much complaining going on here

It's more like nitpicking. We like the general idea, and it would be ill of us not to critique it and make it better.

How about removing some clicking steps, why not offer the reply links (optionally) straight in the email? Like:

=== Click here if you are attending http://inviteup.com/i/abc123/YES

Click here if you are NOT attending http://inviteup.com/i/abc123/HELLNO

Click here if you MIGHT attend http://inviteup.com/i/abc123/PERHAPS ===

Also, I agree that you are on the right side of complexity. Start clean and add what is lacking.

Really cool idea. Thanks.

take out the "might" option.

This is cool and it isn't too simple. I agree though that it needs some optional text boxes to enter a title, location, date, and time. Maybe keep the current simplicity but:

-Make a logo for the top right corner with your branding

-Allow users to edit the Title at the top of the page to whatever the event title is

-Make the subtitle editable so people can add extra info like their name or phone number

-Add a calendar to the right side so people can optionally add a date and time

-Add a google map to the right side so people can optionally add an address

-Clarify that those are both options and if they aren't configured then hide them from the invite page

-Add an optional email box to the generation page so you can receive a secret admin link in order to change the details later

-Add an email box to the invite page (also optional) so people can sign up to be notified in case of a change in time or cancellation

-Ajaxify these options so they're quick to edit. See: Google Notebook for how you should make the titles and other things editable

Okay that turned out to be a lot more changes than I anticipated.

Thanks. Good points.

> turned out to be a lot more

More is great :-) Thanks for your time.

+ Change the language: "We have generated a pair..." makes it sound like I just ran an RSA command. shudder

+ Make the URL's less horrendous. Try to create unique combinations of words and numbers, perhaps even using a fun words dictionary: ex: http://InviteUp.com/i/party-on-330/ instead of http://InviteUp.com/i/yfncxgerht -- hey, someone might even remember it or be willing to put it on a flier.

+ I'm sure you'll get to this, but spend 10 minutes and apply some color before you show it to too many folks--maybe theme it according to the time of year.

Overall, I really like the speed and simplicity. Great job.

> makes it sound like I just ran an RSA command

:-D What would you say?

Thanks. I'll apply those ideas.

Option 1: Remove it completely. I think it's pretty obvious that there are two links. The simpler you get, the more weight you give the stuff that's on the page, and to me this falls below the "useful" threshold.

Option 2: "Use the following two links to send and manage your event invites" (or something like that)

there is, sadly, such a thing as too simple.

A nice form with:

Event: <name here> Description: <description> Host: <you>

To create your 2 URLS would probably prove a lot more popular...

Good point. I'll add that. It was an experiment to see how simple I can get. Perhaps I went too far :)

Extreme simplicity is good for mobile applications. While your app goes a bit too far, it's a good direction. A slightly less minimalist mobile version with the ability to send invites by SMS and mail might be very useful, though that application overlaps with Twitter. It would be better for the specific purpose than Twitter, however.

Imagine:

    Hey guys, how about checking out this new joint for a beer?
    http://mobilvite.com/i/abcdefghi

They click on the URL and their phone goes to a nicely designed browser page with the details, which has been populated by the host-user filling out a few items like where, when, in a simple form. The Javascript on the form can detect if it's on an iPhone or other smartphone and present a directions button that pops up Google Maps.

The advantage of this over Twitter: the information is presented to the invitees cleanly, and they get the details only if they ask for it. Sending multiple tweets or multiple multicast SMS would be cumbersome to compose and annoying to receive.

Cool! Thanks.

Sounds like you described our service exactly: http://zipiko.com/

The goals seem to be what your service is about. However, you seem to require a registration step. Making this an iPhone app would eliminate the need for the user to register as a separate step.

Don't aim for simplicity so much as for elegance.

When you look at the best minimalists in any category - movies, poetry, music - the ones who are best aren't necessarily the simplest. Minimalism is about stripping away unnecessary elements: that implies that you've got to keep the necessary ones there.

Thoroughly agree with the above sentiment.

@OP: I love the concept - it needs some work but it's got great potential :)

I really, really like this. I organize a fair number of small events with friends, and have been thinking for a while that I'd throw something like this together to make it easier to manage RSVPs while still enabling the actual invite to go out over real email. I agree with what's been said that it's a _little_ too simple, but not much. Event name would be nice for a descriptive url, etc, maybe host name. Keep cracking, I'm a user.

Thanks. This means a lot to me. I wrote this app over a month ago and I was too embarrassed to submit it to HN.

If you like simple apps, please checkout my http://smacklet.com/ too :-)

please checkout my http://smacklet.com/ too

Nice.

Although ...

http://smacklet.com/del-note?id=264

Please only use POST for modifications to data. You probably want to obscure that id counter as well.

Yeah, that is indeed on my to-do list. :-)

Web crawlers can't go there and you can undo the delete... so POST-only is more of a "best practices" thing than a necessity. But I'll do that and yes, not obfuscating post count is bad.

People here may disagree with your form factor but the name and setup is brilliant. I've learned to stop asking "Why would anyone use this?" because that often leads to the incorrect conclusion that "No one would use this". If you described Twitter to any tech pundit 10 years ago they would surely doubt its usefulness. Despite all the suggestions here I would urge you not to complicate what you have already.

I was really lost as to what this was for. I thought it might be web application invites (i.e. to social networks). I didn't know that this was for events/parties/etc.

Maybe you can put an example somewhere or even give them an option to send those emails through you with an example email form clarifying?

I thought that it would be easier (not just for me, but for users as well) to let the users handle the invite delivery (email / sms / twitter etc). If they sent it through a webapp, they would have to worry if the invite was eaten by a spam filter etc.

It's great. But please add more description about how users can use it and screenshots of how it will look to receivers. Then this will be a great tool.

Thanks. I'll do that tonight.

there's one big problem with this site that's not obvious.

my (non-techie) friends actually got mad at me for not using evite. The reason: they felt that the other site's themes/look didn't look as nice; they didnt' care so much about evite's problems as much as how it looked

It's absolutely amazing how polarizing evite it. Some people swear it is the absolute best webapp on the internet and would be lost without it while others find it entirely perplexing that anyone uses it at all.

This just sounds like different market segments. I'm in the class that would hate Evite, but I bet their segment is bigger.

Sorry, I don't understand what this is. There's no ability to add info to the invite page (like event info) so what are you inviting your friends to?

You have to send the link to your friends using email / sms etc. When you do that, you'll mention what the invite is for.

But what does the link do?

EDIT: Nevermind, I get it now. I think the idea has some promise, but I'd work on making things more clear on the main page.

Maybe have three small screenshots showing the process:

- An image of an email window with the link pasted in along with event info.

- An image of what someone sees when they click the link.

- And an image of the page where you view their responses.

It would also be cool if the invite link page included everyone's responses.

One link is used by your friends to tell you their response and the other summarizes their responses for you to review.

One of the main problems is that the blue box under the title is non editable, but it looks like it is.

I spent a while trying to work out what I was doing wrong until I read through the comments here.

I like the idea. Micro-services can really work. Look at Twitter :)

Sorry I'll remove that color :)

Suggestions...Facebook Connect..Google Friend connect....Ping.FM(push it out to all my networks at once) integration.

Remain simple but spice up the design some and provide a UI example of what my friends would see upon receiving my invite.

This sounds good but I am not able to evaluate since I have not done any Facebook or other social network apps. Can you please explain a bit more? If you don't want to do it here, my email is (gmail kirubakaran).

So basically instead of making me copy the link ... let me send the invite link and it's details of the event right from your page to all the networks I am on (Facebook, Twitter,etc).

Ping.fm does something similar ...pushes out status notifications.

You could remove one more step by immediately redirecting to the 'view responses' page, then ajax the event properties from there (name,description,place,time).

I didn't want to redirect the search engine bots. Perhaps I can check the user agent and accomplish this. Thanks.

You may want to add a message to the invite. For the question "What is your response" I answer what? what is this?

The idea was that you'll mention that in the email when you send the invite link to your friends.

Why can't I just send an email to all, why creating a link, copy and paste in email then send? seems like a lot of work here.

The purpose is to not get a bunch of replies back from your friends that you have to read through and interpret each as 'yes' and 'no' and keep count.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com