[rant] Evite

[wispfox]

In an entirely different train of thought, excuse me for a moment while I rant.

I _hate_ evites. I will follow them, and use them, since I mostly only get them from people I have some desire to actually stay in contact with and attend the parties of.

However, evites don't contain date, time, general idea of party in the email subject line or body. This makes them immensely annoying if I am not yet sure if I want to attend a party and want to decide later, because it's harder for me to use the email as a reminder to myself to make a decision, as there is no timing information in the email. I am _far_ less likely to have time/initiative to follow a link in my email than to just re-read my email.

I hate having to go to a website just to tell someone if I want to attend a party. The high annoyance factor has meant that it's entirely possible for a party I'm not sure about to be something I don't attend, either because I forget to decide, or because I just don't want to handle the annoyance.

Additionally, evite party invites tend to have huge, highly-visible-in-the-invite guest lists, so I can never quite shake the feeling of my presence not really being particularly important to the invitee, which also tends to make me less interested in attending. I seem to get a stronger sense of actively being wanted at a party if the invite and party information is sent via email, _even if I know the party, guest list, and distribution list are huge_. Considering that I rarely actively want to attend large group parties due to energy levels, this makes a significant difference in my interest.

Yeesh. I can tell it's no longer winter because people are sending out evites again.

Comments

[ladytabitha.livejournal.com]

On the one hand, Evite is useful for the party planners.  If I am planning a party, I have one convenient tool wherein which I can enter the time, date, location, and description of the party, as well as invite people just by entering in their email addresses.  Guests can confirm their attendance (definite/potential/lack of) by clicking on the link in the email and going to the page.  It's very useful, and very slick in that sense, and for these things, I approve.

On the other hand:
- Evite is a huge clunky ad-driven pile of crap that probably increases spam.
- I have the exact same behaviour-responses to evites, regarding not usually getting back to them on time, because it takes action to determine the date and time, and sometimes I'm very lazy.

I'd prefer two corrective things to happen:
- Evite either puts in date/time in the email, OR Evite allows evite emails to contain a brief message from the party planner.
- Someone writes some decent evite-esque software.

In fact, mindlace (veek's husband) wrote something nifty for their wedding this past weekend, so I might go investigate that, and see if I can make it into something I like and want to use.  Then I can have penghuin use it, as well, since he's far more likely to throw parties than I am.

And then, once I get the Castle Anthrax (http://www.castle-anthrax.org) server up and running... clearly, this is a "projects" memory if ever I saw one.

Aaanyways.  Thanks for the reminder, though; I'll be posting in a sec to have people evite a separate address.

[phaedra-lari.livejournal.com]

One of my friends runs DaVite on his server which is a lot like Evite with no ads. I don't know what it's like to adminstrate, but from the invitee POV I love it.

[ladytabitha.livejournal.com]

That's deeply neat.  Would it be possible for me to take a look at it (from the user endpoint, I know)?  If you don't want it publicked, but you are inclined to share it, you can email the link to my username at livejournal dot com.

*hee!*

[phaedra-lari.livejournal.com]

I wasn't really comfortable giving out the url my friend uses for his personal invites, but upon googling found:

http://marginalhacks.com/Hacks/DaVite/

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

Evite is useful for the party planners

Yeah, I am aware, at some level. But I don't plan parties hardly ever, and those tend to be small ones.

- Evite either puts in date/time in the email, OR Evite allows evite emails to contain a brief message from the party planner.
- Someone writes some decent evite-esque software.

Ooooh. Want! Preferably date/time in subject line!

I might go investigate that, and see if I can make it into something I like and want to use.

*curious*

[ladytabitha.livejournal.com]

1) Oh ayuh.  Just suggesting why people might use it ever, despite the fact that it is Espam.

2) Hell, I'd be satisfied with *anywhere in the email*.  I mean, I've received general emailed invites to parties, where the date/time isn't in the subject, but it is in the body, and that's fine.

3) Same here!