Evite is getting long in the tooth. Every day it seems there is some new startup ready to take it down: Pingg, Socializr, Center’d, MyPunchbowl, Presdo. Well, today the IAC-owned invitation juggernaut is fighting back. Or at least, it’s stirring. Evite is launching a new design in beta today. (On a Friday afternoon—interesting choice of timing).
The new site, which is simplified, and has more of a tabbed and modular approach, was built by a relatively new team. General Manager Rosanna McCollough does not try to sugarcoat The problems with the current version of Evite:
We saw some issues. Evite wasn’t giving the user enough control or customization options. There was too much clutter. Everything was jammed onto one page. It was a bad UI.
Amen. She hasn’t fixed everything yet, but she is on the right track. The Evite beta includes more design options, making it easier to customize invitations with rich-media embeds and photos. It integrates with Flickr, YouTube, Imeem, and other places where people keep their photos, videos, and music content. In partnership with JS-KIT, it is adding polling and message board widgets to each page, and (finally) it is including more information in the e-mails people send out so you don’t have to click through just to get an address. Users can also now send private messages to hosts, and there’s an option to designate if you’ll be bringing children to the party.
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But can you reply to invitations from your email yet, or do you have to still go to their site and click through 5 pages so they can get their stupid ad impressions?
Yeah, evite has a serious case of classmates.com-itis.
It’s about time! While evite does have a delightful retro web1.0 look, I am happy they’ve moved into the social media age. I would have thought that this progression would have come sooner, social interaction is at the core of evite’s value prop! So, welcome evite! And im glad I can now use rich media in my invitations. Now I wont have to use a competitor.
I still receive a higher percentage of Evite invites from people outside the tech community (I live in the burbs). Any idea what market share of private invites Evite has?
In case anyone didn’t find the link: http://preview.evite.com
evite’s real disadvantage is your guests have to sign up for an evite account to leave a response. we just used crusher for a birthday invite, and the fact that you didn’t need a user account was the dealbreaker for us to switch.
The url that worked for me is :
http://preview.evite.com/party/invitations
Try Manvite - talk about simple.
HOW THE FUCK IS EVITE BETA? Are you FRIGGIN KIDDING me?
Evite’s new look (for me) is fairly great. However, it’s not that so innovative and interactive. How about if they try to improve it more.
it looks like this is the first in a series of releases for them in the next few months. not that evite will be on the chopping block per se, but my guess is that they will pony up all the social / interactive features *after* releasing the framework and API - which must be forthcoming.
http://m.evite.com — is this new too?