(Editor’s note: This one resonated with us. And since Auren’s pieces so far have been well liked, we’re going with it. Take note that Auren is an investor in new Evite competitor, Socializr.)
Like some of you, I get a lot of Evites. In fact, too many. In the past 8 months alone, I received 228 Evites. Annually that’s 342 Evites • almost one a day!!!
I’ll admit that Evite is one of the greatest viral sites the world has ever known. Yet it is absolutely horrible. Why?
- Evite is ridiculously slow. Even Alexa confirms that Evite is slow, claiming 63% of sites are faster. My question is: who are the other 37%? Are they all sites from Kazakhstan? I cannot imagine a site in the US being slower than Evite (unless it was called eBay, where 75% of sites are faster).
- Evite is even slower if I want to see my past events, import or export contacts, make a copy of an old event, or effectively manage an event.
- Evite profiles are impossible to use and messages expire in 30 days. And so no one ever uses the profiles or the messages.
- Evite was the coolest site…in 1999. I remember when co-founder John Bracken first showed me Evite. I was floored, impressed, and just blown-away. Now I just get bored, stressed, and have grown astray. Evite today is almost exactly like it was in 1999…except it is slower. And this was early 1999 so that’s almost 8 years ago. For those of you not affected by time dilation, that is a really LONG time. That’s so long ago, it is before I ever had RSS, SMS, or PMS (8 years of decrepit user experience will do that to you).
- And amazingly enough there is no good alternative to Evite. I mean, there are 6000 great photo sharing sites but there’s only one sub-par event planning/invite site? Now I know what you are saying • there are thousands of Web 2.0 sites that you can invite your friends to events. That may be true, but have you ever received an invite through any of those services? My score thus far this year:
Evite = 228
All other services = 0.
Evite is therefore the only game in town. Too bad, since I’ve been praying for their demise for quite a while now.
But you know what, there may be an alternative. Recently I received few invites via Socializr, as I am part of their gamma program. I love this site (disclaimer: I am an investor and a friend of the founder). I hope and pray they kill Evite - it will be about five years overdue since that was the last time Evite innovated.
While I have fond memories of Evite and appreciate all it has done for me and my social life, I think it is a dinosaur • Evitesaurus. There is little doubt that Evite is the next Compuserve without the sizzle.
59 Comments
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ThisisGarbage said:
Matt - this is one of the most shameless, basest examples of self-promotion I have ever seen. Why would you ever let this guy publish his rant on Evite with such a clear agenda on his hands? This kind of stuff really makes me sick, I understand he’s an investor, but there’s no reason to bash eVite to get attention, that’s just desparate. Maybe he’s responding the collective yawn that Socializr got when it launched?
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/13/socializr-in-private-beta-zzzzzzzz/
http://software.gigaom.com/2006/09/14/whats-new-today-meebo-socializr-revver/
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Mitchel H. said:
Hey Auren–
Nice writeup. I agree with your insights and have thrown my hand ups in evite frustration myself. It really is amazing that the site hasn’t perceptively changed since it launched! Don’t know if socializr is the cure, but there definitely seems to be some opportunity here.
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steve_ray said:
I don’t mind open criticism of a product, but it’s usually more believable when the arguments are less trivial, transparent, and desperate sounding. This came down to: evite is slow, evite profiles aren’t used, so use socializr (oh, yeah I’m an investor).
Why does someone need to use evite profiles? The purpose of evite is to invite your friends to events. All in all, it’s fine to launch a competing service, but not because of the reasons listed, and I really doubt that there’s much stress involved in getting an evite invitation. So while socializr may have its merits, this wasn’t a great show of what they will be… I guess it will be faster and have better profiles that I’ll want to use. Cool, but not sure you solved the event problem I was having :)
And @thisisgarbage: I actually really like the new venturebeat spin - running opeds, etc. It’s great that Matt is opening up these channels for investors/founders, etc.
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Regis said:
This is yellow journalism at its finest. For shame.
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David Evans said:
Hard to believe this ran. Paid advert/post? This was not an op-ed by any means, expecting better from you guys. Can I trash my competition here as well?
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Born in 1988... said:
eVite 1999: “I was floored, impressed, and just blown-away.”
With all the really interesting things going on in 1999, eVite floored this guy?
He must have been eleven.
Give me a break. Not sure I’d ever admit to being so parochial.
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Nick said:
One more post like this and I’m out of here. Sure, I’m just one reader, why would you care?
“Slow…slower…no good alternative.. wait there’s one (and I’m totally biased btw). ”
Now I can post about “why I hate Socializr”. At least one of its investors thinks we’re stupid.
Good job polarizing, though. No wonder you pray they kill evite. Well, I’d rather see evite evolving than dead, which is what you’d have wished if you didn’t have an investment on oh, the alternative. Right?
And as you say, there are plenty of sites like evite - maybe you’ve got invites fro Socialzr because you’re part of that game, after all.
Like I said, one more self promotion post like this and I’m out.
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Mike said:
I don’t get all the bad reactions to this post. Evite is the classic “totally fail to capitalize” website.
Think about this — how come Evite decides the relationship ends after the event. Why can’t it mashup with Flickr? Why can’t I buy tickets ahead of time? They should be integrating tools like Flickr, Mollyguard, etc into Evite.
It’s a shame they have IAC behind them because they can’t compete with ticketmaster and most of the other IAC properties.
The reality is though that Evite stinks.
This doesn’t read like a paid promotion, it’s one man’s opinion and since when do we get pissed about people being upfront about what conflicts they have?
Welcome to the Internets…
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mike said:
careful what you say about kazakhstan — borat’s got ‘em angry enough already …
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John said:
I am VP Marketing for TripHub.com. We have “evite like” invitation and RSVP management. Our service is vertically focused on gatherings that involve travel. I am fascinated by this discussion and very surprised that there haven’t been more vertically focused sites leveraging invite functionality. Evite has consistently failed to capitalize there. There is soooo much to do before, with, after the event! Mike - while we haven’t added post trip memory sharing (Flikr etc.), that is a logical next step. I’m just glad that our invitations sit at the center of a large economic event vs the typical $50 BBQ or birthday party seen on evite and…. ahem… socializr??
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steve_ray said:
Mike, there’s nothing wrong with someone expressing their opinion or argument (albeit biased, and unconvincing). Not to mention this post had nothing to do with evite not capitalizing, it states “why I hate evite.” - nice attention getter, btw.
After thinking more about what was actually frustrating about this read, I think I’ve figured it out. It’s that most readers didn’t know that Auren was an investor in Socializr. I was led to believe that this was just a passionate message about wanting to make evite better. Then you get hit on the head it was all a trick.
Watch the movie “Wild Things” and you’ll experience the same discomfort.
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Knox said:
Possibly the lamest article I’ve ever bothered to respond to.
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Steve Poland said:
I wrote an opinion piece about why Evite (IAC) and Friendster need each other. It’s regarding the potential threat of Socializr to Evite, why a purchase of Friendster by IAC (Evite) would breathe new life into Friendster and help Evite defend their domination of event planning (thus destroying any chance of Socializr succeeding).
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evbart said:
At least he disclosed his interests. If you’re unconvinced by the rant, then just keep on using Evites, and now harm done.
I’ve personally used:
just very simple and easy to use invites
- http://www.goovite.com/a very slick app that helps you choose meeting times
- http://www.meetwithapproval.com/more of a social network
- http://www.skobee.com/other options or “alternatives” include:
- http://renkoo.com/login.php
- http://www.doodle.ch/And in the name of shameless self promotion I do some ranting and raving over at http://www.lifeinlists.com
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Matt Marshall said:
yes, i did think twice about Auren’s promotion of socializr before running this. but this is an opinion space, and i intend to give to equal play to others.
i think the piece resonates with me because evite doesn’t do the trick, and it is hard to believe i haven’t gotten a single invitation from any of these web 2.0 invitation/event companies — may say something about me, though! — and no, i’m not sure socializr is the answer either.
note that VentureBeat was the first to link to Poland’s piece outing Socializr and that Polands piece isn’t very friendly to Socializr.
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Bob said:
Will you let an investor in Evite write an editorial criticizing Socializr?
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Andrew Fife said:
Matt:
it would be interesting to know what you relationship with Auren is.
-Andrew -
Mathew Ingram said:
Matt:
Maybe a disclaimer about Auren’s relationship with Socializr should be a little higher up? Just a thought.
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David Ulevitch said:
Andrew,
Scandalous, I’m sure of it! Auren writing a piece about being frustrated with Evite, saying what we all think about them but don’t write, and moreover, disclosing his involvement with a competitor is truly shocking and deplorable.
Auren, you are on notice! :-)
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Peter Armstrong said:
+1. That kind of disclaimer should be in bold italics right at the top.
Besides, this guest article trend on people’s blogs in a bit annoying–I didn’t subscribe to your feed to read an infomercial. I like your writing enough to subscribe to it, not random third-party stuff. If he had written a good blog post on his blog and you had linked to it, the infomercial nature of it would have been less obnoxious…
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chgxfdg said:
hideous , truly hideous . . . if this is opinion , it should be labelled as opinion with disclosure at top, otherwise this is pure bs
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Aleksey Linetskiy said:
Auren,
A great article - and it resonates with me. I also hate eVite - though for slightly different reasons. Funny thing, quite recently I’ve wrote a post in my blog on the same topic and with almost the same title:
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TD said:
Matt,
I am really disappointed. This isn’t what I expected of VentureBeat. The reason I liked reading your blog is because of its journalistic integrity.
Regardless of the message about the quality (of lack thereof) of Evite, it is tainted by transparent self-promotion. The fact that it is in an “Op-Ed section” should not give free license to allow folks to post trash a service while at the same time promote themselves or the companies that they are invested in. I don’t have a problem with VentureBeat doing guest posts where someone talks about their company if it is relevant and interesting, but this is ridiculous.
So long as you make the editorial decisions about who gets to post on the column, it is, in my view, your responsibility to manage this.
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Sweet Leon said:
Shameful. I’m glad the commentors are calling you out on it.
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BS said:
You guys need to be careful about these silly references - “Are they all sites from Kazakhstan?”
Get your head out of your…. and smell the new world.
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PJ said:
I agree. It’s slow. It’s boring. And the ads interfere with the interface.
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Auren Hoffman said:
These are awesome comments. My mom read this and called me to make fun of me. she was laughing for hours … just like old times.
a couple of comments:
1. I would like to offer my sincere apologies to the people of Kazakhstan. Kazaks are wonderfully fun-loving people who are very peaceful (and sit on a lot of oil). And Borat comes from there.
2. I hate Evite. sorry. i just hate them. I also hate Windows Explorer. and i hate olives too. i just don’t like olives … i’m not apologizing for that. (see my upcoming rant on VegatableBeat).
3. i don’t hate Evite because i invested on Socializr. i investor in Socializr because i hate Evite. and yes, i actually prominently disclosed that i am an investor. and it was at the bottom of the piece. but you all got there and read it.
4. i still hate olives. you haven’t convinced me about that yet. and i am invested in pickles hoping for the demise of all olives.
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Andrew Fife said:
Auren:
lets talk, I’ve got a great new pickle 2.0 startup.
-Andrew -
pireland said:
Thanks EVBART for pointing out the other great alternatives to eVite. This author has no reason to claim there are no alternatives.
I do not understand how getting too many eVites makes the system bad. Are you suggesting this new service you are promoting will filter things out for you?
These days I just send invites to people through Google’s invite system that is hooked to its calendar. Much simplier than creating a completely seperate page and its easier for all my other google-infected friends.
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ThisisGarbage said:
Aurens a pretty funny guy - wonder how funny he’ll be when his investment goes belly up. At least he’ll have a lot of sarcastic, nerdy jokes to make about it.
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Mathew Ingram said:
Auren, I think it’s stretching things a bit to say you “prominently” disclosed your relationship, when it’s in the second-last paragraph and is in parentheses. In J-school, that’s called “burying the lede.”
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Rishi Khaitan said:
This post is not only horribly skewed in favor of the author’s own interests, but also provides misleading information. While desperately looking for something bad to say about Evite, Auren first cites Alexa’s rating of Evite as “Slow”. However, nearly every popular site on the net as either a “Slow” or “Very Slow” rating on Alexa. eBay, Amazon, etc. Of course, Auren’s own RapLeaf is “Very Fast” but it’s pretty easy to keep your response times lightning fast when you have no server load. Moreover, MySpace is notorious for being woefully slow but it’s rampant growth further proves that users are accepting of slow pageloads if the service is valuable to them.
I’m not suggesting that Evite is the holy grail of event systems but it is popular for a reason and the features Auren suggested - if users really want it - could be implemented by Evite in a week.
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Vivek Sodera said:
Auren - Amazing job with all the controvery you stirred up. You got 34 comments with this one vs. 5 on your last op-ed. As a super-optimistic entrepreneur, I project 239,348 comments on your next piece.
Seriously though - I just think people need to relax a little, take a step back, and laugh at your op-ed piece. And then slap themselves for getting all riled up.
By the way, I hate olives too.
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Stu Rampage said:
Auren Hoffman is a self-promoting douche-bag. “Investor” in Socializr? Do they accept roles of quarters/pennies? Who writes this guy’s bio?
Let me reiterate: DOUCHE-BAG.
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Andrew Fife said:
Stu:
come on man, your comments are totally uncalled for. As much as I disaprove of this post, Auren doesn’t deserve that kind of mud slinging. Furthermore, if I were currently working on a startup I would want my investors doing anything they could to get me publicity. I don’t like the fact that this was posted on VentureBeat, but it was smart on Auren’s part and has probably driven a lot of traffic to Socializr.
-Andrew -
Dave McClure said:
i trust Auren’s opinion & perspective on eVite, however the disclaimer that he’s an investor in Socializr should go right at the top.
(makes a big difference whether that information is available to readers *before* the endorsement vs after)
note: there are also several other evite competitor sites with products in alpha or beta. while i agree with Auren that eVite hasn’t been innovating much, i don’t think Socializr will be the only available option.
- dave mcclure
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SFGary said:
Matt, Matt, Matt….please delete this guest post and we’ll forget it ever happened. The most charitable thing I can say is that he at least admitted that he was an invester in…what was that company again? Can one be tough on a free service? Even if the answer is yes, this was way over the top.
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Matt Marshall said:
Ok, I’m going to consider changing the title of this column, to OP-ED, for one. But I’m hearing you guys, that there wasn’t enough disclosure on this at the outset. I’m fixing the the editor’s note at the top.
To be clear: I have no financial or business relationship with Auren whatsoever. I’m ready to run any contributors item that comes in well-written, and helps to spark debate — and that includes one from Evite.
Note that we’ve just run an opinion piece from Joyce Park, who works for a competitor to Socializr.
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somaking said:
Got here from techmeme.com. Reading the article to the end made me feel played like a con victim.
Shameless self-promotion does not make interesting or informative content. It’s gratuitous and repulsive.
Treat your readers better. And Auren, don’t quit your day job, cause you suck at op-eds.
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Joseph Hunkins said:
I’m with the others in feeling it’s inappropriate to have an investor in the competition featured as the rant of the day. Comments may be true but credibility gap is simply too high.
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Mathew Ingram said:
Glad you made the change, Matt.
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MadRapper said:
Did anybody notice this line:
“I was floored, impressed, and just blown-away. Now I just get bored, stressed, and have grown astray.”
That’s a pretty clever rhyme…talented.
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will said:
disclosure is the only issue here, his opinion is his investment thesis . . any entrepreneur should have the gusto to do this, but any journalist should have the foresight to not allow this op-ed.
Lastly anyone notice the side swipe at eBay? which is also self motivated?
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John Walker said:
Ok, so I bit and took a look at Socializr.com. About 5 seconds in they lost my attention. No screen-shots, no demo, no real compelling information. The UI is horrible…looks like something I built in 2001.
Cute verbiage here and there about being founded in 1848 during the California Gold Rush, but not very much Web 2.0 going on there.
Maybe their hiding all the good stuff behind the Login curtain, but I would never know. I’m not giving up my creds just to have a look-see.
PS: Always disclose your personal interests in a clear or pronounced way at the top or bottom of your piece. Otherwise, in the blogosphere, you’ll get slammed like this.
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Nancy said:
As long as I can import my past evites into a BETTER solution, I’m all for it. Hey! Maybe I should write one! What a great idea!!! /cheer
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Todd Zeigler said:
I agree that the load times are slow and the site is dated. It’s not a good user experience.
But that’s not really it for me. For me I hate it because Evite is about the organizer and not about the guests. I have no problem with people using Evite for formal events where you need a head count. But it seems to me that a lot of Type A personalities use the service to force structure on social interactions that don’t need or require it. It is overused. It makes me RSVP to a happy hour like I would to board meeting. It’s just too top down for my tastes.
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Jackie said:
I hope he paid for that ad space. I love Evite and because of this blatant bashing I will NEVER EVER use Socializr. I think Auren should stick to business because he clearly lacks any journalistic integrity.
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Nita Fautier said:
Did not realize that investors are not allowed to have strong opinions. The responses seem very hostile and not taclking the issues like Auren brought up with Evite, rather slamming him and his opinions. Not sure blogs have to have same journalistic rules as newspapers. Blogs were designed to have free information flow without editorial interference. If you all need edited content wall street journal is still in business ;-))
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Kris said:
The Evite website went DOWN today, a Friday, at 2 p.m. and is still down hours later And I have a fundraiser tomorrow! ARRHHHGGG.
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niti bhan said:
Evite, doesn’t that mean “Avoid” in Spanish? I wonder who named it?
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Chief Apricot said:
It does not look like Auren has done his research. There are dozens of event management and event registration websites out there. And they are getting better and better.
EventBrite (formerly MollyGuard) is a a very decent generic service and our own product Wild Apricot (WildApricot.com) is an example of a vertically focused one (we handle event registrations as one of the aspects of non-profit and grassroot groups management). -
Denali said:
Socialzr sucks. Even from the layout, you can tell it badly wants to be myspace. lol. Go Joyce, go Renkoo!!
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PG said:
Here is a new kid on the block, with some nice intend. It allows to link social events to non-profit organizations.
http://www.inviteforgood.com -
PxuQDB8IJp said:
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Matt said:
In case you missed it:
http://venturebeat.com/2007/01/15/mypunchbowl-joins-growing-list-of-evite-rivals/
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vmlumthbya said:
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Kazeldhf said:
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5 Trackbacks
10:10 am
The honeymoon seems to be over, Matt » Mathew Ingram: mathewingram.com/work said:
[...] Matt Marshall over at VentureBeat (formerly Silicon Beat) is taking some lumps for a recent guest-blog post that was extremely critical of the online part-planning site Evite, because the author, Auren Hoffman, is an investor in a competing site known as Socializr — a fact that isn’t disclosed until almost the end of the piece, in a kind of offhand way. My friend Paul Kedrosky has taken a shot at Matt, as have others. [...]
11:32 am
Tainted commentary? « The Digital Taco Stand said:
[...] The journalistic integrity of VentureBeat, the successor to Matt Marshall’s SiliconBeat blog, is taking a beating today over an Evite criticism by Auren Hoffman. Basically, Hoffman goes off about how Evite is unbearably slow and has remained almost untouched since 1999. The shameless part is that he then continues to pontificate that with all the web 2.0 innovation how come there is no real answer to Evite. But then, Hoffman suddenly does have the answer! [...]
4:21 pm
Jay & Silent Rob » Blog Archive » Blog Controversy said:
[...] A recent article on VentureBeat has been creating a lot of noise in the blogosphere. The post was by Auren Hoffman, CEO of Rapleaf, and talked about eVite and Socializr. I originally heard about the post on Paul Kedrosky’s site, and I think Paul has a good point, much the same as the comments that were predominantly against having Auren’s post on the site at all. Matt Marshall does seem like a good guy, and I do agree, controversy is good, and while it probably was a mistake to publish it, I do think the majority of the article was pretty bang on. [...]
6:33 am
Starked SF, Unforgiving News from the Bay » Blog Archive » Talk of the Town: Thursday said:
[...] VentureBeat’s Auren Hoffman: Why I Hate Evite. [...]
11:43 am
Venture Beat Contributors » Why I hate Evite at blackrimglasses.com said:
[...] Venture Beat Contributors » Why I hate Evite: “But you know what, there may be an alternative. Recently I received few invites via Socializr, as I am part of their gamma program. I love this site (disclaimer: I am an investor and a friend of the founder). I hope and pray they kill Evite - it will be about five years overdue since that was the last time Evite innovated.” What a fucking moron. Oh, and your byline photo is goofy. [...]