Call me bad at parties, but a dedicated app for inviting people to the party is too much fanfare for my taste. If everyone waits around to see if their friends are going, nobody will RSVP because they're all waiting on each other to RSVP. We're all friends here. A good party fosters serendipity.

Granted, I'm the same person who accepts any invitation to any concert, and intentionally doesn't listen to the band ahead of time because the experience of hearing an artist in a live setting for the first time is so fun. I may have a bias towards serendipity.

> nobody will RSVP because they're all waiting on each other to RSVP

The article discusses this. “Start by inviting your closest friends, get some yesses, then expand from there.”

The trick is that you already discussed the party with a core group. They are basically co-hosting the party with you. You already cleared the idea with them, heck throwing the party might even be their idea. So they won’t be waiting for others to RSVP. And then their yes-es provide the social proof to others that it will be a cool party and they too join saying yes. Thus the party grows like a snowball.

> a dedicated app for inviting people to the party is too much fanfare for my taste

It is not for you. It is for the party organiser so they don’t have to copy paste the same information to everyone (date, location, short description). It also sends reminders to people who want to be reminded.

> A good party fosters serendipity.

Yes. I agree. Serendipity at what happens at the party, who do you meet, what do you folks do or chat about. Not quite sure how a party invite ruins any of that.

I'm glad im not the only one who found that bizarre. I'm not exactly a social butterfly, so i was wondering if im just out of touch with the more sophisticated social scene, but the idea of having an app for a private party just seems nuts to me. Maybe if its a wedding or something.

Then again the entire thing seems predicated on having large (> 10 people) house parties, which, at least in my social circle, is something teenagers do, not adults

> Call me bad at parties, but a dedicated app for inviting people to the party is too much fanfare for my taste.

I agree. We threw a halloween party. We just discussed who we wanted to invite and threw everybody together in a whatsapp groupchat to announce the thing.

That the thing I miss the most from Facebook. I mean, it still exists, but back then, almost everybody used Facebook, and for actual two-way communication, not for following "influencers" or trying to be one. And that was the true value, the features are nothing special, but the networking effect was unmatched.

It means you could make your invitation on Facebook and everyone was on it, with maybe a few exceptions that could be dealt with separately.

Serendipity is nice, but if you are the host, you need to at least get an idea of how many people will be there. And while we may all be friends, things can get tricky when you start inviting friends of friends.

> nobody will RSVP because they're all waiting on each other to RSVP

Partiful, specifically, has a setting where you're not allowed to see who's RSVP'd until you've RSVPd, precisely for this reason, I imagine.

Where I'm from it's quite common to use Facebook events, and people can see who else is coming. People who don't use facebook I invite "normally" via message.

The good thing about partiful (the most popular and imo best party app) is that you can set the invite up such that they cant see the guest list unless they RSVP yes