Lots of companies think they can improve online event invitations, mostly by building out social networking features that facilitate interaction before and after events.
Invitastic, a newly-released project by Jackson Fish Market (which brought us Tafiti and They’re Beautiful!), heads in the other direction by making invitations pleasingly simple and straightforward.
As Jackson Fish Market says best in its own words, “there are lots of things you can’t do here…create a social network, plan party activities, split the tab for the event, figure out carpool arrangements, find recipes for Mai Tais, and more. There are pretty much a limitless number of things that Invitastic doesn’t do.” I should add, you can’t even change how your invitations look and feel (update: you can change the background pattern by clicking on the arrows beside your invite info). All you do to create an invitation is enter an event name, provide a description, and indicate the date, time, and location. To send your invitation out, just provide the names and email addresses of your guests and they will receive an attractive invitation via email with which they can RSVP.
Invitastic’s all about detail and design. The event emails are sharp and easy to read (although the little cartoon they use looks a tad creepy). The emails contain the event organizer’s name in the “From” line instead of Invitastic’s, and an ICS file for importing the event into your favorite calendaring program is automatically attached. Both are nice touches and the email’s overall feel makes it welcoming to users of all computer literacy levels.
A lot of website companies should take notes from Jackson Fish Market. Most importantly, they should notice how much effort this small firm puts into making its websites aesthetically pleasing and usable. Internet users are a fickle bunch; don’t strain their eyes or require them to think more than five seconds to realize what they can do with your site.
I really hate to do this, but, here it goes.
I hate it.
How is this any different from opening iCal, or Outlook, and creating an entry, adding your friends to it and hitting ’send’.
That’s what makes the other sites so much better — the ability to have more than just iCal or Outlook.
Maybe I’m missing something?
I’d agree that simplicity and clarity are strong suits here. The captcha with both text and audio was a nice touch. Had I known that the “Location” field was going to provide a link to a map, I would have entered in an actual address. That could have been auto-populated, just like the “Event Name”.
The activation process went well and the invitation was received by my list as planned. Good work guys!
Ryan – Well for one, lots of people don’t use calendaring programs. And for two, Invitastic keeps track of RSVP information so the organizer and guests can see who’s coming. For those reasons alone I think it’s a nice service to have.
I agree with your point about calendaring programs, in fact I had a problem sending one to someone a while ago (in a different time zone but that’s a whole different story).
What drove me to this page from my news reader was: WTF? How is this the front line of cool tech start ups I want to read about at TechCrunch. This is a site that sends out invitations. Seriously.
If you wanted to make a point about better usability or something I’m sure there’s a better site to illustrate your point.
That’s right
Ryan: lots of people don’t use Outlook or other calendars. Plus, I’d guess a lot of people use calendars provided by their employer (outlook) and might not want their parties on their work calendars anyway.
In my opinion, keeping tabs on the number of guests coming, and allowing all guests to see the guest list is another advantage to invite services like this.
but why make us register? evite doesn’t require registration to send an invite.
this is why i wont use it, other than that its simple and clean, that i like.
hope you guys are ready, there is more competition in this evite stuff than kung pao chicken in china town. MMmmmmm kung-pao-chicken….
What??? This is revolutionary? This is about as lame as theyrebeautiful.com. Remember that one with its terrible aliasing of flower images? Good god! How much money are these people making?!?
Lets look at who is actually visiting that site today:
http://www.alex...rebeautiful.com
ANSWER: NOBODY!
As soon as you are all done writing your blogs/shils – interest drops to zero. Horray for Web2.0!
A SF-based company is doing something similar: Crush3r.com. Minimalistic invites, as evites originally did.
I was *almost* concerned that they bit off crusher’s verticali model, on first glance. Lots of room in the invite space, but I don’t think this is doing much.
Simplicity is the essence of beauty.
Blazing fast video search
http://www.meet...earchVideo.aspx
@9: I second that. Crush3r’s got the lightweight invite down, minus the login/registration, ads, and heavy, graphical themes. Users can send audio and video invites, too. (Disclosure: I know several of the guys behind the product, but have been impressed with what they’ve done.)