My view of the dynamics is thus: Evite will lose share to a plethora of old and new: email, social networking events then the likes of gvite, planypus, etc. I suppose it was a bit sensationalistic of me to tout gvite so strongly. I do think gvite is a long shot but if anybody google has the strongest chance.

We are also in a long period of transition to mobile services. But there is so much fragmentation in the devices and OSes that a cohesive universal service is a long ways off.

Email is social and so are social networking services. Banter takes place over email all the time. And on the social networking platforms, the social is in place.

Let’s use an analogy from chemistry or physics: Say your new service offers a lower energetic state than either email or social networking events. What’s the activation energy of transitioning to that state? The arguments I have really aren’t over state energetics, but rather over transition energies, which translate into consumer mind share and marketing. Getting the herd to shift break their patterns and move away from their already pretty good services to something else takes a huge amount of disruption.

For example, none of the people I know personally even use gcal in the first place. Why’s this? Because it turns out that there is a huge subset of people out there that actually (gasp) doesn’t use online calendars! These people are anti-organization freaks. I happen fall into this category. I don’t use calendars. But I do use Planypus, and so do these other people. Because Planypus is a social system for discussing what you’re doing. It makes planning a night out fun. Discussions on Planypus typically take a tangent from what’s beign planned to general fun and jokes back and forth. Gcal does not do this. Gcal is for people who live and die by the calendar….

So please there’s no need for sensationalism based on one person’s usage here…just because you or someone you know has the mindset that invitations/planning are cut and dry things doesn’t mean others don’t like to have a bit of fun.

Remember people don’t make decisions on rationalilty, features, or functionality. They make gut emotional decisions. The _truly best_ way to plan something would be for every person to keep an online calendar with their exact schedule and have a computer figure out when they can meet. Why doesn’t anyone do this? Because it eliminates all the fun of social interaction and actually talking to people. People don’t buy a PT Cruiser or a Volkswagen Beetle because they’re the best functioning cars. They buy them because they are cool and fun…..