Is Evite the Myspace of party planning sites? That’s what Amy Mengel opined in response to my complaining about the service. With just about every social network trying steer users towards its own events solution, event planning still seems very wild west in the Web 2.0 world. Evite is well established, but I groan every time I see one of their e-mails in my inbox. Invariably, the invite falls into one of two categories: a mass invite from someone I don’t know or haven’t talked to in years; or, a mass invite from someone I know well and who probably should have picked up the phone or handed me a card if they really wanted me at their wedding. I loathe Evite. But, in the rare case where I do RSVP to an event through Evite, the automatic reminders can be handy. Then again, I could set those up in Google calender as well.
Meetup.com has a nice system for event planning, but it’s very tied to that specific community. Facebook also has a nice interface, but if you’re like me – with a lot of activists and organizers in your network – you may also have gone to a default ignore mode to tune out hundreds of spammy invites. (Facebookers, I doubt that everyone in your network is a good fit for your event; maybe take a little time to target those invites?)
Eventbrite seems to be a decent solution with integrated social media, but I still haven’t seen it used in an e-mail setting. And maybe that’s the issue – that some invites should be very non-intrusive, and that others should be very personal. And e-mail is too much for one, not enough for the other.
But that’s me.
What online solutions are working for your events and parties? And which do you respond to?
Meetup.com has a nice system for event planning, but it’s very tied to that specific community. Facebook also has a nice interface, but if you’re like me – with a lot of activists and organizers in your network – you may also have gone to a default ignore mode to tune out hundreds of spammy invites. (Facebookers, I doubt that everyone in your network is a good fit for your event; maybe take a little time to target those invites?)
Eventbrite seems to be a decent solution with integrated social media, but I still haven’t seen it used in an e-mail setting. And maybe that’s the issue – that some invites should be very non-intrusive, and that others should be very personal. And e-mail is too much for one, not enough for the other.
But that’s me.
What online solutions are working for your events and parties? And which do you respond to?
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3 responses to “Conundrum – Managing Party Invites and Informal Events”
Heh, the best (insert sarcasm here) is when I receive an invitation by email that is cc’d to 30+ people, causing people to reply to all.
I prefer eventbrite and anyvite.
My! I’ve had some of those in Facebook e-mails that simply don’t want to die. Will have to check out Anyvite.
I am in the same conundrum. I am trying to think of the best way to make event planning, inviting, and RSVPing feel seamless for my new project: The League of Extraordinary Ottawans. Everything feels like a kludge. If I find anything I’ll let you know.