So any new social planning service not only has to have good positioning but must also market it well. The marketing currency here is user uptake driven by the early adopters — party hosts — who appreciate the differences and share the experience with the uninitiated through the invitation. In your case, it would be some yet to be specified niche of party hosts who highly prize creative invitations over the *mental* switching costs and brand security.

Brandy security: I know my experience and unless you can sell me different — out position and market the message effectively — I’m not gonna jeopardize it. Social planning is obviously social — more than shaving! — and this is where party hosts really don’t want to rock the boat. On Evite and the new services, no guest has to be already be registered and this has been made a selling point. But that’s really a defensive point. What guarantees to the host peace of mind that he has doesn’t have to explain anything to his guests? After all, he just wants to throw a party not sell a new service.

Take the example of Google events. I used it once and the response was lukewarm. I wasn’t sure if the invite was bad or the system was alien to the users so I quickly stopped using Google events, even forgot all about it. Fast forward a few months, I get two random invites from friends using the service and I am emboldened to try it again. Lessons here, Google is a huge brand and despite that I had doubts about selling the service to my friends. I wasn’t confident until I actually saw other people using it. Even that confidence was had to be by bolstered fact that I already use GMail and GCal and many of them use Gmail and Gcal. (The framing here is important and subconscious, I am no longer selling a new service but showing friends the benefits or teaching them to use extensions of their current service or selling to late-adopting friends from the higher socially validated ground of “hey dipshit vitamin C is great, why aren’t you taking vitamin C?”)

Since I write about these new services, obviously I have to sit down and consider the arguments, but rarely have I actually switched to a new service. Then how do you get someone you can’t sit down and won’t consider your selling points for a split second to switch? I’m not singling out Koolvite for whipping, just pointing out the difficulty faced by any new idea.

In this case, I probably don’t throw enough parties and don’t care enough about invite personalization and care too much about what my friends use. Some niche out there does care about personalization over everything else. Who are they and how do you reach them?

For UI, our effort is to provide an intuitive, friendly alternative so that the effort of learning is overcome by the benefits. Invite recipients (guests) do not need to be Koolvite users and hence there is little impact to them.

Regards event collateral stored at Evite, technology trends such as web APIs have severely diminished its value. Koolvite can seamlessly import addressbooks from Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, etc., is integrated with Google Local to help find locations and is integrated with Flickr to search and insert photos into the invite. Our intention is to continue expanding the choice available to users. Such integration is actually an advantage over Evite because users get best in class services of their choice.

As always, we appreciate any feedback.