Just in time for the SuperBowl season, Boston-based MyPunchbowl is inviting everyone to check out their new eVite competitor. For a while eVite has been seen as a ripe target for competition as users continue to complain about constant reminder email turning the service into eSpam.
There’s a list of services already lining up to take on the dot com veteran in all their Ajaxy glory. Renkoo, Skobee, and Socializr are a few we’ve covered already. Renkoo and Skobee have diferentiated themselves by incorporating the pre-evite event planning stage, and MyPunchbowl has done the same.
MyPunchbowl has taken a more rigorous approach to party planning by creating a workflow model, providing a great amount of control at each step. Each party starts out as a save the date or full invite and is carried all the way through to the after-party info. Throughout the whole process you and your guests can chat on a party message board, send out updates to a few or all guests, re-edit any step of the process, and fully manage the RSVP status.
Save-the-Dates get the basic details about the event - what and where - out to your friends by email with a Plaxo-supported contacts importer. Invitations finalize the date/time and guest list including a map. Both of these invitations are customizable by color and event photo (with embedded Flickr photo search). Unlike other services, MyPunchbowl has personalized RSVP messages, allowing for a better-than-boilerplate way to invite your guests. It’s not as pretty as the other services, but that’s sure to change over time.
After you have your event mapped, a party store locator points out several chains of party stores. Like travel planning sites, monetization will most likely come through affiliate deals with stores and other party services.
The after-party stage allows members to share photos on static URLs and chat about the event. In the future, the after-party stage will also consist of ratings and recommendations that will inform other party-goers. The ability to not only plan a party, but learn from the experiences of other party planners will be an attractive feature in party planning and provide a strong reason to choose MyPunchbowl over the others.
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I’m just surprised it took this long for evite to get some serious competition.
Hi there, I wonder if you’ve had a chance to check out Planypus. We launched in early November and are competing in the social planning arena. We focus on easy casual plan making where each participant can suggest ideas. It’s much more democratic than any of the the other services.
I might just have an idea like going to dinner, I can post that and let my friends fill in the details and when they’ve all decided I can be notified on my phone of where and when to be. We also have a wiki-like planspace in case you want to make more involved plans. It’s been quite nice for planning ski trips. Give it a shot! We’ve got a redesign in progress too so stay tuned!
@Ben:
Evite has a ton of mindshare. Trying to compete with it is a problem of marketing more than technology. Many competitors are coming out with ajaxy goodness but I think it took this long because it is only now very affordable to build a competing product (technology-wise) so that more money can be spent on trying to dethrone the giant through marketing.
I have a feeling that those that try to compete directly with evite may lose out because it’s a hard sell to someone who uses evite and knows it well to switch. I know many people who are very non-savvy web users who use evite. Getting them to switch is tough. Although techcrunch can drive a lot of traffic to your site, you find it’s people who are just curious new-technology enthusiasts, not real users. Of course only time will tell. Good luck punchbowlers
What is this mashable now?
Technology is making life simpler for people with every passing day. 3 cheers for the Geeks ( Kidding),
Hip,Hip
http://blogs.ibibo.com/TechnicalJournal
Soooo much better than evite. The personal RSVP alone is worth switching for, and the Plaxo integration took the pain out of importing all my contacts. Will definitely use this for my next party.
I agree with Yan. Getting people to switch from Evite’ing won’t be easy at all since its only competition in the past 5 years has been email. I’d give MyPunchBowl a year or two to gauge their success as sites like these are almost purely word of mouth. My guess is that they won’t make much of a dent, which is too bad since I find Evite to be very basic and a bit short in its interface and features.
Koolvite.com offers a differing alternative to Evite and MyPunchBowl based on the premise that its the invite that matters. We believe that there is an audience that wants their invitations to be richer, distinct and with a personal touch.
We expect to be live by February but below are some sample invitations that demonstrate our concept. Highlights are the free placement, choice and sizing of photos, text and graphics…you are no longer confined to a set of prefabricated invitation templates!
http://www.koolvite.com/getEve.....075a0300fb
http://www.koolvite.com/getEve.....a5840100de
http://www.koolvite.com/getEve.....c470090098
Your feedback will be much appreciated.
-Vandana
I like how their sample invite, “The Big Game,” is in “my basement” on “main st.” in Manhattan.
(no basements, no main street)
I see some trouble with money. I had a few creative ideas just by reading about them and it seems that they could implement them easily. I don’t see the creativity through their website at all. I give it a 3.5 out of 7
Have you actually logged in? I sent an invite in about 5 minutes. This site is so much better than anything that is currently out there.
I’m curious to know why there aren’t any of these evite-like sites for the business market for networking events. I’d love to have some recommendations for those as I’m in the market for it.
and i ask, WHO USES THESE SITES? just send a frigging email to people. “lets meet for drinks”…does it have to be more complicated than sending an email?
or i can try the renkoo (which means?) model…
message: “hey folks, go sign up for a renkoo account so we can IM each other about meeting for drinks”
response: “can i just say yes now and not sign up for some frigging renkoo account??”
back:”no! do not say yes or no now! we must only say yes or no through the renkoo tools!”
????
hey i wanted to write a note to myself to change a lightbulb. i see there is a new site - “notesforbulbs.com”…lots of good seed funders, former google and yahoo people. lightbulbs are a HUUUUUUUGEEEEEE business, this is soooooo monetizable. but wait! there is a new ajaxified competitor - “teslanotes” that offers some cool community features for the nascent community of people who need to change lightbulbs at pretty much the same time. we talk, we synergize, WE CHANGE THE WORLD. i am looking for a major shakeout between notesforbulbs and teslanotes.
“whoopeee”-
I agree with half of your comment.
No, I don’t need the internet to have drinks with a couple friends after work.
But these guys are doing parties. If you’re inviting 35 people to a party at your house, you might want to send them something nicer than an email … and you might want to be able to track RSVP’s in one place rather than having to sort through your inbox for replies. I’ll give it a try ….
I agree with Jordan…sometimes you need an invite better than email. Say its your kid’s birthday party, would you just send an email ? This was what spurred us to create Koolvite. Check out the sample invitations in the previous comment #8 as argument.
@whoopeee
Planypus is targeted towards people with medium to large sized social circles, especially in urban settings. What happens for people like ourselves who have social groups of 20-25…we want to have dinner on friday night with a couple of people. I’m not going to sit there and call 20 people just to see who’s available, nor am I going to waste my workday trying to figure out where we’re going to eat. Instead I send out a Planypus and let all my friends suggest places to go. By the time they’ve figured it out, I haven’t lifted a finger and I have a group of 10 people ready to go out to dinner.
Sure you can do it over the phone, but it’s going to take you at least half an hour for back and forth conversation. I don’t think it’s feasible for a group of 10 even for casual things. Planypus works well for groups of 3 and up when you need to figure out where and when you’re going, especially if you have an idea but don’t want to be the one in charge of organizing the outing.
no Yan, it is not that easy, because half of the people on your list will send you static about making them sign up for yet another moronic service in order to accomplish a trivial task
the inventors of smtp were well ahead of the web - they created these things called cc and bcc
@whoopeee
what makes you think any of these services require you to sign up? Planypus, for example sends all the invitation info to the person in an email and they can rsvp by clicking any of the links in the email. they never have to sign up….
@whoopeee
I don’t know about you, but in my group of friends I was always the organizer whenever we had any sort of get together, which we have often. Getting a group together for something simple like a dinner can hardly be called trivial unless you really enjoy wasting loads of time on back and forth calls or emails. And if you’re planning a trip, forget about it. Try doing that over phone or email, you’ll go nuts!
Invite for good is another alternative with some social good. It is simple, nice e-invite website with an option of supporting good cause. You can support any NGO of your choice.
http://www.inviteforgood.com
Hmmm… They use evil Plaxo? Not sure I want to sign up with them.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006.....pologizes/