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

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

#21

Post by timr »

How are you guys planning to get traction? This is a really crowded field, and adoption doesn't appear to be driven by rational behavior. For example, Invitastic (http://invitastic.com) is already a pretty darned good replacement for Evite, but nobody knows about it (no personal association; they just happen to be a local company in the space).

Also, a few seconds of googling turned up this laundry list of pretenders to the throne:

http://www.scurrilous.com/blog/archives/2007/03/30/evite-alt...

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

#22

Post by alaskamiller »

omnipath wrote: post #13

I don't particular use Evite (I mean, I know what the site is, but that's about it.) What are these problems that Evite supposedly has? From what I seen, people in general don't have a problem using them. Lay people, I mean.

Not much.

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.

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

#23

Post by drm237 »

alaskamiller wrote: post #22
omnipath wrote: post #13

I don't particular use Evite (I mean, I know what the site is, but that's about it.) What are these problems that Evite supposedly has? From what I seen, people in general don't have a problem using them. Lay people, I mean.

Not much. 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, fl…

Not Much? I think you may be in the minority of people who think that evite doesn't have many issues...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evite#Criticism

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,16383...

http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/16-02/s...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/magazine/13wwln-medium-t.h...

http://www.evitesucks.com/

http://www.jabrams.com/thetruthaboutevite.html

http://venturebeat.com/2006/09/19/why-i-hate-evite/

http://valleywag.com/tech/modern-and-awkward/8-companies-we-...

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

#24

Post by jmorin007 »

timr wrote: post #21

How are you guys planning to get traction? This is a really crowded field, and adoption doesn't appear to be driven by rational behavior. For example, Invitastic ( http://invitastic.com ) is already a pretty darned good replacement for Evite, but nobody knows about it (no personal association; they just happen to be a local company in the space). Also, a few seconds of googling turned up this laundry list of pretende…

Agreed, it is a crowded market space with different sites targeting different sub-segments. We have some ideas that we're working on for user adoption and growth.

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

#25

Post by alaskamiller »

drm237 wrote: post #23
alaskamiller wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not much. 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, fl…

Not Much? I think you may be in the minority of people who think that evite doesn't have many issues... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evite#Criticism http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,16383... http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/16-02/s... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/magazine/13wwln-medium-t.h... http://www.evitesucks.com/ http://www.jabrams.com/thetruthaboutevite.html http:…

Yeah, I went through the same exercise with developing a product in this field and went through all those links and used it as justification of how an Evite killer is possible. All those links end up talking about the same 2 things over and over again:

- ads on the invites

- email bait you to visit the site

Great, but that's how they make money and they've been profitable with a small staff for a long long long long long long long long time.

Most of the other invitation sites focus on niches, Renkoo on the concept of friends getting together, Crush3r on hipster stylings, MyPunchbowl on coordinating the whole event, Socializr on being a social network, so on so forth. Besides Facebook, MyPunchbowl is the only other service getting quite a bit of traction. But it ends up being the same concept: single input info, multiple output info. I really believe this is a game of user conquest and attrition. Without the momentum and money to stay in the fight for the long haul, Evite (which has already been genericized) will just keep on chugging along.

Either way, good luck with the site and I'm sure you're much smarter than me at figuring out how to make this work.

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

#27

Post by marketer »

timr wrote: post #21

How are you guys planning to get traction? This is a really crowded field, and adoption doesn't appear to be driven by rational behavior. For example, Invitastic ( http://invitastic.com ) is already a pretty darned good replacement for Evite, but nobody knows about it (no personal association; they just happen to be a local company in the space). Also, a few seconds of googling turned up this laundry list of pretende…

Specifically about invitastic -- they never made any serious attempt to go after evite. Jackson Fish Market is more of a marketing/consulting company. They developed invitastic for a client to promote a product (which is an interesting business model).

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

#28

Post by timr »

marketer wrote: post #27
timr wrote: post #21

How are you guys planning to get traction? This is a really crowded field, and adoption doesn't appear to be driven by rational behavior. For example, Invitastic ( http://invitastic.com ) is already a pretty darned good replacement for Evite, but nobody knows about it (no personal association; they just happen to be a local company in the space). Also, a few seconds of googling turned up this laundry list of pretende…

Specifically about invitastic -- they never made any serious attempt to go after evite. Jackson Fish Market is more of a marketing/consulting company. They developed invitastic for a client to promote a product (which is an interesting business model).

True, but it's not that they don't want to take down evite -- they just realize the difficulty of the task, and prefer to take a few quick shots at the goal instead. Their subsidized development model is a really just a hedging strategy against the failure of any particular app.

I think the important point is that they've built a great evite-replacement product that nobody is using. There's clearly something interesting going on here, and I wonder if it's a case of evite being good enough? Geeks may complain about evite, but there are enough good replacements out there that the general public could have switched already.

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