Evite Archive

Yesterday I spent some time with the Evite and JS-Kit teams to discuss the updated Evite beta platform launch. From a Web perspective the most impactful update is the addition of JS-Kit’s comment system and polling platform. Now when you create an event, a message board is automatically added to the event where guests can speak before, during and after the event. JS-Kit CEO Khris Loux notes that this deal pushes JS-Kit past the blogosphere in terms of integration. This is a major distribution deal for JS-Kit who are just coming off their acquisition of Haloscan.

Other Evite platform updates include integration of Flickr for images, YouTube/Vimeo for videos and Plaxo for contact management. Event pages are more "hip" by adding images and videos. Evite also signed popular artist Robert Holmes to create a variety of new event designs. There’s also a private comment feature which allows guests to send notes to the host without the entire guest list viewing them – quicker than an email. More mobile options have been added including event reminders and the ability for hosts to send event invites to guests via sms.

Users can now contribute their own designs as well. This was an interesting area of discussion. All designs are automatically approved and available in the event gallery. The Evite editors will hand pick some of the popular designs to place on their home page. They expect the community to police the user-submitted designs for illegal and objectionable content. Wonder how long before we see something way out there – my odds are one week.

The Evite platform is built in Java. eVite is part of IAC and has 35 team members in Los Angeles. eVite’s self-reported stats include: 18 million registered members, 15 million monthly invitations sent, 6 million parties planned and 24,000 Evite invitations sent every hour. The average event guest goes to Evite four times per event.

The Evite team explained that the biggest challenge the face is working on a new platform while still maintaining the current platform.

To be honest, the updates are a bit of a letdown. When JS-Kit CEO Khris Loux and I spoke about this announcement a week ago, I was really looking forward to yesterday’s meeting. I was excited to see a whole new Evite that was more 2008 and less 1998. The team certainly was excited to demo their changes and that’s what makes this so difficult. But what I’ve seen is somewhere in the middle, call it 2005. When you are the market leader, it’s ok to be years behind.

Evite is announcing the launch of QuickVite today. QuickVite is a free, cross-platform mobile/Web application that enables users to plan casual, last minute get-togethers. I can’t imagine planning a party on a mobile device and why not just text the other parties with the location and time?

Evite’s mobile initiative kicked off in September with the successful launch of its "Send-to-Phone" feature, which enables users to send event updates and location details to their mobile phone for easy access and recall. With more than 450,000 Send-to-Phone users, Evite is quickly closing in on 1 million Send-to-Phone alerts sent.

Evite will launch its QuickVite application on Facebook in the near future. The company hopes this helps increase rapid adoption of the tool.

Evite is still living in Web 1.0 land but they are the largest and until the Google-monster starts party-planning, Evite is feeling pretty comfortable. Other startups including Renkoo are gaining but very, very slowly.