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Apple Invites

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Re: Apple Invites

#261

RIP Partiful

Well, Partiful is free, available on Android, and doesn’t require an iPhone or iCloud+ subscription to use. In contrast, this seems more exclusive. For now, Partiful lives to fight another day.

And also doesn’t make enough money to be sustainable…

Re: Apple Invites

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people in their early 20s to mid 30s in the NYC area, I'm starting to see mass adoption of an app called Partiful for managing social invites and events, it has a lot of nice features for sending invites, RSVP management, sending text blasts out to attendees (you can schedule reminders the day before or whatever).

My social group also uses Partiful. It works great, but it's a little worrying that it's so useful while being free: I can't see how this possibly could make money, so I assume the enshittification is coming any second now.

Literally they just need to add ticketing with a small fee. They are sitting on a huge revenue stream they just haven't need to roll out yet.

Re: Apple Invites

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm in my mid-thirties and most of my friends have ditched Facebook. Marketplace seems to be one of the main use cases that's still relatively popular.

It's also the only bit of Facebook that hasn't turned into an endless stream of trash. I expect that not to last either, if you're looking for an idea then a localised marketplace alternative with social proof should be on your radar.

For a long time they were heavily promoting "Ships to You" non-local goods. Annoying. Lots of dropshipper type stuff rather than a local unique items. Marketplace seems to have backed off that in the last year(s) though, my feed seems very local, one-off, and "real.

Re: Apple Invites

#264
post #105
post #2

Looks like an Apple version of Partiful?

WTF is this? How do they make money? They have picture of 10+ people as a "team", on their help page https://help.partiful.com/hc/en-us/articles/26526557943067-H... it just says "We offer party add-ons and merch on our online store!" Their online store has like 2 tshirts, stickers, sun glasses and a bag?!

VC for now, offer ticketing with a fee later.

Re: Apple Invites

#265
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mission Accomplished. iOS is a significantly large enough market that it will have some success for those looking to replace FB/evite. You can say the same thing about FB/Whatsapp or any other social network - you have to be in-network to get the invite even. Looking forward to testing this out for some events.

Most social networks don't have a $5-600 buy-in cost though.

I sure wish they did. It would reduce the number of bots to nearly zero.

Re: Apple Invites

#268

My wife is in a position (board chair for a co-op) that results in her sending out a lot of invites to events. Evite has kinda been the go-to in her social/co-op group for ages, but man it suuuuuuucks these days. Ads everywhere, annoying patterns, and lacks a bunch of nice features that this seems to have. Very happy to see this

Evite was hot for awhile - totally gone downhill. Same as meetups. Tough to make those things as paid businesses which is probably necessary to keep them operating well (or at least take VC money and try and make a return).

I see very little use of either Evite or Meetup at this point though I imagine if I sought them out I'd see some continued use. (I do run into an Evite signup from time to time for a paid event.)

Re: Apple Invites

#269
post #49

I don't see how this competes with partiful. Feels like it'll be another half baked never updated app from apple. I wish they'd open their apis and integrations more. Feels silly that these apps get first class access to apple apis, meanwhile better made apps are forced to do weird workarounds, or simply have no integrations.

I see this app as more like the Notes, iMessage or Freeform apps. There are tons of apps out there that do XYZ better, but Apple wants to ship a polished version that does 90% of everything the average user needs. It accomplishes three things (in my eyes):

1. It helps grow Apple's ecosystem by covering just enough ground to make third-party alternatives less necessary for most users.

2. It reduces one of the major "sticky" points that keep people in Facebook's own moat. Events and Marketplace are the two reasons I still use Facebook.

3. It encourages competition from the people who want to do that last 10% better than Apple's apps, raising the baseline and hopefully forcing innovation as well. Those apps lead to more App Store revenue, so, cynically, it's a win-win for Apple.

Re: Apple Invites

#270

Brilliant move. The transition of the major social networks over the last 10-15 years -- from being a space for friends to interact to being a space to consume content produced by "unconnected" entities like influencers -- has created a huge opening for someone to claim the friends and family network. There is no one better positioned (at least in the U.S. where iPhones are the majority handset) than Apple.

Apple and Meta's wet dream is exclusionary friends and family networks tied to their future AR hardware. Half the people at the Christmas party pointing and zooming around an AR globe to talk about their travels and the other half with the wrong brand not able to see anything. Maybe they just place the virtual globe on top of one of them and completely block them out to get more space since they aren't seeming relevant.
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