A little over a year ago we saw the launch of Anyvite, a Y Combinator funded competitor to Evite that was looking to streamline event planning. Tonight, that startup is launching a spin-off site called Tweetvite — a site dedicated to helping plan and discover Tweetups.
For those that haven’t encountered the term before, a Tweetup is a real-life get together between people who use Twitter. Beyond that, the rules are flexible: Tweetups can be large events or small gatherings, can involve grabbing a few drinks or just socializing for a bit, and can be planned for in advance or spontaneous. Founder Jeff Morin says that while there are plenty of sites that cater to traditional events, like birthday and BBQs, the Tweetup niche is underserved.
Setting up an event with Tweetvite will be familiar to anyone who has used an event site like Anyvite or Evite. To get started, you enter the name of your event, the location, who is hosting it, and other essential information. But the site includes a few attributes that you won’t find anywhere else: it asks you to designate a hashtag for the event, as well as a custom shortened URL. The site also makes it easy to Tweet out your event, or share it with other services like Facebook and MySpace. Another big difference from traditional events sites is the fact that Tweetvite offers a directory of upcoming Tweetups (given the nature in which they’re announced, they’re generally open to the public).
Once you’ve created your event, you can use the site’s control panel to monitor for any tweets containing your hashtag and see how many people have viewed your page and RSVP’d. The site also offers a widget that you can embed on your blog to inform visitors of your upcoming tweetup.
Tweetvite looks great, with a very polished interface and a streamlined event creation process that only takes a minute or two. At this point the biggest question in my mind is how many people actually throw Tweetups — they may be becoming increasingly popular but are nowhere near as common as traditional events are, so it may be tough to build a business around this niche. That said, Twitter is obviously still in its infancy, so the number of Tweetups may grow rapidly over the next few years.
this is quite similar to facebook event invitation.
Anyvite is a free site dedicated to event invitation creation and group organization in which Tweetvite will be familiar to anyone who has used an event site like Anyvite or Evite.It has a designated hashtag for the event, as well as the custom shortened URL.looks great, with a very polished interface and a streamlined event creation process that only takes a minute or two.
But developing apps on the same grounds are more and how different is this?have to see the competition and judge!
this is quite similar to facebook event invitation. Will be fun to see our they work this out.
Another app to organize gatherings and meetings. Good. But developing apps on the same grounds does not make anything special.
Here in New Mexico, it took a person to organize the tweetups (@AshDHart) to get them going on a regular basis.
At one event there were 250 people including the mayor of Albuquerque and a number of other politicians, journalists, etc. (http://ub0.cc/9n/2J)
I think that it takes a person like this in the community (the city at large or a niche community within a city) to organize these things. A connector, as Malcolm Gladwell might say.
Very cool. Looks good so far. I like how 3rd party Twitter apps are starting to turn Twitter into a service that can directly compete with Facebook’s features.
Now days arent we building lot of useless things around any thing which is successful. One person invent or comes up with an idea then everyone start coming up with stuff around it.
It’s a nice place to let tweeple know the meeting via Twitter.
The term tweetup is moronic and should be erased from history.
Just because a meeting, event or party is promoted via Twitter it requires its own term?
So eventually I might not be able to have a birthday party? I can only have a birthday tweetup?
Good luck convincing people what words to use. It worked out real well for Web 2.0 and synergy.
ugh… “web 2.0″
lol.
this is interesting….m sure with growth of twitter users this no. will also grow rapidly! … good terms tweetups
so any one for bangalore tweetup :0
Is this taking things a bit too far? This is just another money making scheme, but will probably catch on due to the upcoming status and popularity of twitter.
Whats wrong with just meeting up, why do we have to tweetup?? Sites such as this are just making us more and more dependant on technology, obviously its a big part of our lives nowadays, but surely it doesnt have to encroach on literally every aspect, does it?
ummm there has been a site called twtvite for like a year. i kinda think a previous site of the same general name should have been at least referenced in this article…
Yep, TC wrote about it 9 months ago: http://www.tech...-tweetups-easy/
Why would I use this instead of Facebook or MySpace?
- Customizable invitation with different designs, color schemes and embeddable media
- Automatic tracking and display of tweets about the event
- Easily searchable listing of Tweetups in your local area and ability to add your event to this directory
- Embeddable blog widget to collect RSVPs from 3rd party sites
- Integration with Twitter Oauth for RSVPs with Twitter accounts
- Display of user’s profile information within the guest list
- and more…
Probably just check out tweetvite to see all of the differentiating features.
good job jeff, it has legs to stand up!
Rather cool.
How do all these free twitter service sites make any money? I don’t understand the business logic for Y Combinator to fund these.
Have you guys seen Sponty? http://www.thesponty.com
Posting events there is much easier, it shows you what’s happening around you and even pipes into twitter.
at http://twillage.com you can find local events posted on twitter. Just type in your city and it’ll find concerts, tweetups, meetups, conferences, garage sales, etc.
This is not all that new though is it – TwtVite has been around a while now…
http://www.twtapps.com
(not affiliate with the company in any way)
I like this feature . . . hey the more ways to get the word out the better
A very different approach from jomout (http://jomout.com) where activities are created from your tweet by including a hashtag #jomout.
Jomout understands simple English and uses regular expression to capture a twitterer’s activities/event.
Example tweet for Beginner:
I’m going for dinner tonight at 7pm #jomout
Experts can also include locations & date with following some simple posting patterns.