Why I hate Evite

(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.