

Anyvite: Event Creation Made Easy (YC Summer 08) - fallentimes
http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/anyvite-event-creation-sending-invites-easy/

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fauigerzigerk
I was invited to a wedding recently. The logistics were rather complicated as
it took place in a somewhat remote location that few guests had known before.
People were travelling there from far afield using all kinds of transport,
some of which had to be chartered just for the event. Also, the whole thing
didn't take place in one single location. We were actually moving between at
least three locations and a lot of other coordination intensive stuff was
going on.

Now when I think back what the invitations looked like, it was nothing like
what these invitation sites offer. There were maps and train/bus schedules and
reservations and bad wheather provisions and different cases for different
groups of people and a lot of real time coordination until very late. Of
course there were people who were not in the digital age at all, so everything
had to be printed and mailed as well.

I don't know whether it makes sense for sites like Anyvite to cater to these
kinds of complicated events and include event organisation features on top of
invitations. These events are of course much less frequent (I personally
remember only three comparably complicated events). Organisers could certainly
use help with that, on other hand rare complicated processes in the consumer
space are dangerous for software makers as people don't like to learn stuff if
they need it only once every few years. It would have to be simple AND
powerful and integrate a lot of communication channels and information
sources. It's difficult to get right I think.

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wayne
I'm a huge fan of anything that can displace Evite, but when organizing
events, I found I consistently fall back to Evite. Anyvite adds nice-to-haves
like RSS, mobile support, and a much cleaner/streamlined UI, but none of these
are MUST-haves. If I use anything but Evite I risk people not recognizing the
email as an invitation and deleting it. Plus, I have to put up with all the
"Why didn't you just use Evite?" jokes. As cool as AnyVite (and Renkoo and
Socializer and mypunchbowl and Google Calendar) is, I'd rather spend the extra
10 minutes muddling through Evite. I guess that's sad.

~~~
jmorin007
I'm curious as to what would you consider a must-have feature to be in an
invitation creation site? With more and more people relying on mobile Internet
access while on the go, I would think that a mobile interface to view and
manage your invitations would be a bit more than a nice-to-have feature. The
other issues that you present are definitely hurdles to overcome when
attempting to take on a product with a well known brand in the space, but are
not insurmountable, as we've seen continued user adoption of Anyvite.
Hopefully, in the future, we'll have the product to the point where you wont
even consider spending an extra ten minutes on Evite when organizing an event.

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aston
We've been using Anyvite to schedule our weekly poker games. In general, it's
a great experience. My only wish is that I could copy an event to a new day
and/or make a recurring event.

~~~
jmorin007
We'll be pushing out that feature in the very near future.

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fallentimes
I want Anyvite widgets.

~~~
jmorin007
Soon my friend...very very soon.

