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I'm in my mid-thirties and most of my friends have ditched Facebook. I didn't really realize this until when I used it to create an event for a house party... I

I'm in my mid-thirties and most of my friends have ditched Facebook. I didn't really realize this until when I used it to create an event for a house party... I was somewhat surprised that only 2 people out of 15 even saw it. I ended up resorting to good old text message and that worked, but it was tedious. Not sure how popular this will become, but having a social-media-less event invite/broadcasting system would be nice, and having one that most people with an iPhone have access to covers much of my friend base

crossroadsguy 2y ago
Here friends just send a message on WhatsApp. I do not know anyone who has hosted a house party of 79800 people so that they are struggling with this. But then again I guess some geographies have it more complicated, isn't it?
- lxgr 2y ago
  A (for most of the world, in any case) possibly surprising fact about the US is that WhatsApp is not very popular there. This indeed causes problems when wanting to create a quick ad-hoc group for a party invitation etc., if at least one of the invitees is not an iPhone user.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    It causes problems if one of the iPhone owners isn't an active iCloud+ subscriber: > Creation of invitations requires an iCloud+ subscription. This isn't about making life easier on people, this is about getting you to subscribe to Apple's services for access to a REST API. Apple gets some benefit of the doubt, but this is literally Slop-as-a-Service.
    - nozzlegear 2y ago
      I can't tell what you're arguing here – are you misunderstanding what you quoted from the FAQ? Only the person who creates the event needs to have an iCloud+ subscription. Everyone else can RSVP to it regardless of whether they have an iCloud+ subscription or even an Apple device at all. > Do invitees need to have an Apple device with the app to attend an event? > Apple Invites is for everyone. Guests don’t need the app, an Apple device, or an account to RSVP to an event. Source: www.icloud.com/invites
      - alt227 2y ago
        > Apple Invites is for everyone. Guests don’t need the app, an Apple device, or an account to RSVP to an event. Right, so how do they get and respond to the invite? I'm guessing SMS or email, making the whole thing pointless.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        nozzlegear 2y ago
        Why is that pointless?
  - ghaff 2y ago
    The only reason I have WhatsApp is that a couple non-US friends use it from time to time. No one I know in the US does anything other than standard text messaging whether or not it ends up being iMessage.
    - cozzyd 2y ago
      The parent's chat group for my toddler's school is WhatsApp. There was nobody who didn't have it installed (and it's about 50/50 android/iPhone).
ninininino 2y ago
For people in their early 20s to mid 30s in the NYC area, I'm starting to see mass adoption of an app called Partiful for managing social invites and events, it has a lot of nice features for sending invites, RSVP management, sending text blasts out to attendees (you can schedule reminders the day before or whatever).
- Analemma_ 2y ago
  My social group also uses Partiful. It works great, but it's a little worrying that it's so useful while being free: I can't see how this possibly could make money, so I assume the enshittification is coming any second now.
  - bobbylarrybobby 2y ago
    My guess: certain features will just become pro-only
  - kyletns 2y ago
    Literally they just need to add ticketing with a small fee. They are sitting on a huge revenue stream they just haven't need to roll out yet.
  - cozzyd 2y ago
    I can't imagine something like this is expensive to host, minus perhaps the text messages. But presumably they could charge for those (and make a little off the top).
- wenc 2y ago
  Partiful works but to me it lacks polish. It feels like MySpace when FB first came out.
  - npinsker 2y ago
    I'm curious in what way you think so? It's both attractive and easy to use for me.
Mindwipe 2y ago
I don't think it's that they've entirely ditched FB, but FB is genuinely terrible at surfacing event invites. It would prefer you to have to scroll through a bunch of irrelevant garbage in your feed that it had "recommended" instead so the product team can high five themselves over badly designed engagement metrics rather than worry if the users don't actively despise their product.
- Chilko 2y ago
  Yep I second this, I usually find out that I've been invited to an event when someone makes a post in the event, and often not from the event invite itself.
talldayo 2y ago
> Not sure how popular this will become Since Apple was too lazy to make it into a standard, it will probably go the way of App Clips. Niche idea, too few users to adopt it and no stakeholders with enough control to make it popular on other platforms.
- astrange 2y ago
  What would a standard for party invites be? ics files and CalDAV are sort of an Apple standard.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    iCalendar is RFC 2245[0], written by Microsoft and Lotus. CalDAV is RFC 4791[1] written by Apple, Oracle, and CommerceNet. Those are examples of open standards that Apple happens to use, but aren't Apple standards in the sense that they're something they cooked up internally by themselves. [0] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2445 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2445 [1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4791 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4791
jillyboel 2y ago
[flagged]
- nozzlegear 2y ago
  Why are you intentionally misrepresenting what they said?
anton96 2y ago
I'm still on facebook and a lot of my friends still are, the main problem we have with facebook events it that almost no one sees them. This section has been over loaded with suggestions to event you might have no links with of things your remote friends are going to take part of.
wenc 2y ago
Platform fragmentation is a generational thing. I thought email was a common denominator but I learned most people don’t check email or check it rarely. So different from the days when everyone had email. I still use FB and so do many of my friends my age (mid to late 40s). But a bunch have also migrated to Instagram. Among the younger generation, you’re a millennial if you’re on instagram because they’ve moved to TikTok. FB folks are over the hill. There’s a generational divide and pride in being trendy. WhatsApp is only a thing among my international friends — many Americans don’t have it. The only universal now is text messages but it feels so clunky (even with iMessage).
- ojhughes 2y ago
  It’s interesting that WhatsApp never caught on in the US. It’s ubiquitous amongst everyone I know. Android use also seems to be much larger in Europe
  - ghaff 2y ago
    I don't remember the exact timeline but I think SMS became free (bundled with mobile phone plan) in the US before WhatsApp became popular. And most of us don't interact via chat very much internationally. So (probably) most people just default to SMS/iMessage unless there's a reason to do something differently. And even the one person I regularly communicate with chat in Europe, we default to Facebook Messenger.
  - briandear 2y ago
    People in Europe are poorer. Android is cheaper.
- tcmart14 2y ago
  I wonder if it is rooted in similar things though. Right, like with email. People don't really read or check emails because spam became a serious problem. Then with social media, looking at facebook, there is definitely a big different in ad space in facebook between the time I used to use it to now. Where ads have effectively become the "spam" equivalent for social media. Ultimately, did success of these technologies also lead to its demise. Email was so good, so it made sense for a market of spammers. Facebook became a prime place for ads, and as ads become more and more of the platform, people started to consciously or subconsciously step away to other platforms.
throw0101d 2y ago
> I'm in my mid-thirties and most of my friends have ditched Facebook. Marketplace seems to be one of the main use cases that's still relatively popular.
- smackeyacky 2y ago
  It's also the only bit of Facebook that hasn't turned into an endless stream of trash. I expect that not to last either, if you're looking for an idea then a localised marketplace alternative with social proof should be on your radar.
  - gs17 2y ago
    It still has a lot of trash, but 90% of it is trash you experience as a seller. Scammers are still really common, and I doubt the moderation has gotten much better since I failed to sell an empty aquarium because they couldn't be convinced it didn't have fish in it (although based on everything else on Facebook, there probably is just no moderation now).
  - pkamb 2y ago
    For a long time they were heavily promoting "Ships to You" non-local goods. Annoying. Lots of dropshipper type stuff rather than a local unique items. Marketplace seems to have backed off that in the last year(s) though, my feed seems very local, one-off, and "real.
- 2muchcoffeeman 2y ago
  Marketplace and groups. Most of my friends are on WhatsApp so we ditched FB. Apple would be smart to build those things and make it available on Android too. Then we could ditch FB altogether.
  - joshstrange 2y ago
    Yep, groups was essentially all I used FB for until we moved to Discord (which much better for us), I was so glad when I could stop checking FB completely.
pridkett 2y ago
> having one that most people with an iPhone have access to covers much of my friend base Luckily - you don’t need an iPhone or iCloud account to receive an invite and RSVP to it. Might be harder (or impossible?) to add to photos and music, but you can still get an invite and RSVP to it.
nlh 2y ago
It’s remarkable how this has changed. Back in what I call the “Facebook golden age” (2012-2016), before it turned to complete crap, it was unthinkable to host an event that was NOT organized by Facebook. I recall throwing birthday and holiday parties and all I had to do was scroll through my friends list and invite everyone and that was that. Everyone would see it and everyone would RSVP. Oh well - it was nice while it lasted.
Tiktaalik 2y ago
People currently use Instagram stories for this a lot and it's absolutely wild how Meta hasn't caught on and built in any sort of infrastructure for you to save and keep track of events.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
giorgioz 2y ago
Yes, I was also a big Facebook user in my twenties and now I'm in my mid-thirties and it seems Facebook became a lot less useful for this decade of my life. For the birthdays of children in my social surroundings it seems the best practice has become to create an image with the details of the birthday party. Usually a photo of the birthday child with written Alice is turning 3. Join us for an afternoon of fun at Address on Saturday 16:00. Usually shared on Whatsapp either in direct messages or in an existing school group if you are inviting the whole class or in ad-hoc group created for the event literally called Alice Birthday Party

crossroadsguy 2y ago

Here friends just send a message on WhatsApp. I do not know anyone who has hosted a house party of 79800 people so that they are struggling with this. But then again I guess some geographies have it more complicated, isn't it?

lxgr 2y ago
A (for most of the world, in any case) possibly surprising fact about the US is that WhatsApp is not very popular there. This indeed causes problems when wanting to create a quick ad-hoc group for a party invitation etc., if at least one of the invitees is not an iPhone user.
- talldayo 2y ago
  It causes problems if one of the iPhone owners isn't an active iCloud+ subscriber: > Creation of invitations requires an iCloud+ subscription. This isn't about making life easier on people, this is about getting you to subscribe to Apple's services for access to a REST API. Apple gets some benefit of the doubt, but this is literally Slop-as-a-Service.
  - nozzlegear 2y ago
    I can't tell what you're arguing here – are you misunderstanding what you quoted from the FAQ? Only the person who creates the event needs to have an iCloud+ subscription. Everyone else can RSVP to it regardless of whether they have an iCloud+ subscription or even an Apple device at all. > Do invitees need to have an Apple device with the app to attend an event? > Apple Invites is for everyone. Guests don’t need the app, an Apple device, or an account to RSVP to an event. Source: www.icloud.com/invites
    - alt227 2y ago
      > Apple Invites is for everyone. Guests don’t need the app, an Apple device, or an account to RSVP to an event. Right, so how do they get and respond to the invite? I'm guessing SMS or email, making the whole thing pointless.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - nozzlegear 2y ago
        Why is that pointless?
- ghaff 2y ago
  The only reason I have WhatsApp is that a couple non-US friends use it from time to time. No one I know in the US does anything other than standard text messaging whether or not it ends up being iMessage.
  - cozzyd 2y ago
    The parent's chat group for my toddler's school is WhatsApp. There was nobody who didn't have it installed (and it's about 50/50 android/iPhone).

ninininino 2y ago

For people in their early 20s to mid 30s in the NYC area, I'm starting to see mass adoption of an app called Partiful for managing social invites and events, it has a lot of nice features for sending invites, RSVP management, sending text blasts out to attendees (you can schedule reminders the day before or whatever).

Analemma_ 2y ago
My social group also uses Partiful. It works great, but it's a little worrying that it's so useful while being free: I can't see how this possibly could make money, so I assume the enshittification is coming any second now.
- bobbylarrybobby 2y ago
  My guess: certain features will just become pro-only
- kyletns 2y ago
  Literally they just need to add ticketing with a small fee. They are sitting on a huge revenue stream they just haven't need to roll out yet.
- cozzyd 2y ago
  I can't imagine something like this is expensive to host, minus perhaps the text messages. But presumably they could charge for those (and make a little off the top).
wenc 2y ago
Partiful works but to me it lacks polish. It feels like MySpace when FB first came out.
- npinsker 2y ago
  I'm curious in what way you think so? It's both attractive and easy to use for me.

Mindwipe 2y ago

I don't think it's that they've entirely ditched FB, but FB is genuinely terrible at surfacing event invites. It would prefer you to have to scroll through a bunch of irrelevant garbage in your feed that it had "recommended" instead so the product team can high five themselves over badly designed engagement metrics rather than worry if the users don't actively despise their product.

Chilko 2y ago
Yep I second this, I usually find out that I've been invited to an event when someone makes a post in the event, and often not from the event invite itself.

talldayo 2y ago

> Not sure how popular this will become Since Apple was too lazy to make it into a standard, it will probably go the way of App Clips. Niche idea, too few users to adopt it and no stakeholders with enough control to make it popular on other platforms.

astrange 2y ago
What would a standard for party invites be? ics files and CalDAV are sort of an Apple standard.
- kstrauser 2y ago
  iCalendar is RFC 2245[0], written by Microsoft and Lotus. CalDAV is RFC 4791[1] written by Apple, Oracle, and CommerceNet. Those are examples of open standards that Apple happens to use, but aren't Apple standards in the sense that they're something they cooked up internally by themselves. [0] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2445 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2445 [1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4791 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4791

jillyboel 2y ago

[flagged]

nozzlegear 2y ago
Why are you intentionally misrepresenting what they said?

anton96 2y ago

I'm still on facebook and a lot of my friends still are, the main problem we have with facebook events it that almost no one sees them. This section has been over loaded with suggestions to event you might have no links with of things your remote friends are going to take part of.

wenc 2y ago

Platform fragmentation is a generational thing. I thought email was a common denominator but I learned most people don’t check email or check it rarely. So different from the days when everyone had email. I still use FB and so do many of my friends my age (mid to late 40s). But a bunch have also migrated to Instagram. Among the younger generation, you’re a millennial if you’re on instagram because they’ve moved to TikTok. FB folks are over the hill. There’s a generational divide and pride in being trendy. WhatsApp is only a thing among my international friends — many Americans don’t have it. The only universal now is text messages but it feels so clunky (even with iMessage).

ojhughes 2y ago
It’s interesting that WhatsApp never caught on in the US. It’s ubiquitous amongst everyone I know. Android use also seems to be much larger in Europe
- ghaff 2y ago
  I don't remember the exact timeline but I think SMS became free (bundled with mobile phone plan) in the US before WhatsApp became popular. And most of us don't interact via chat very much internationally. So (probably) most people just default to SMS/iMessage unless there's a reason to do something differently. And even the one person I regularly communicate with chat in Europe, we default to Facebook Messenger.
- briandear 2y ago
  People in Europe are poorer. Android is cheaper.
tcmart14 2y ago
I wonder if it is rooted in similar things though. Right, like with email. People don't really read or check emails because spam became a serious problem. Then with social media, looking at facebook, there is definitely a big different in ad space in facebook between the time I used to use it to now. Where ads have effectively become the "spam" equivalent for social media. Ultimately, did success of these technologies also lead to its demise. Email was so good, so it made sense for a market of spammers. Facebook became a prime place for ads, and as ads become more and more of the platform, people started to consciously or subconsciously step away to other platforms.

throw0101d 2y ago

> I'm in my mid-thirties and most of my friends have ditched Facebook. Marketplace seems to be one of the main use cases that's still relatively popular.

smackeyacky 2y ago
It's also the only bit of Facebook that hasn't turned into an endless stream of trash. I expect that not to last either, if you're looking for an idea then a localised marketplace alternative with social proof should be on your radar.
- gs17 2y ago
  It still has a lot of trash, but 90% of it is trash you experience as a seller. Scammers are still really common, and I doubt the moderation has gotten much better since I failed to sell an empty aquarium because they couldn't be convinced it didn't have fish in it (although based on everything else on Facebook, there probably is just no moderation now).
- pkamb 2y ago
  For a long time they were heavily promoting "Ships to You" non-local goods. Annoying. Lots of dropshipper type stuff rather than a local unique items. Marketplace seems to have backed off that in the last year(s) though, my feed seems very local, one-off, and "real.
2muchcoffeeman 2y ago
Marketplace and groups. Most of my friends are on WhatsApp so we ditched FB. Apple would be smart to build those things and make it available on Android too. Then we could ditch FB altogether.
- joshstrange 2y ago
  Yep, groups was essentially all I used FB for until we moved to Discord (which much better for us), I was so glad when I could stop checking FB completely.

pridkett 2y ago

> having one that most people with an iPhone have access to covers much of my friend base Luckily - you don’t need an iPhone or iCloud account to receive an invite and RSVP to it. Might be harder (or impossible?) to add to photos and music, but you can still get an invite and RSVP to it.

nlh 2y ago

It’s remarkable how this has changed. Back in what I call the “Facebook golden age” (2012-2016), before it turned to complete crap, it was unthinkable to host an event that was NOT organized by Facebook. I recall throwing birthday and holiday parties and all I had to do was scroll through my friends list and invite everyone and that was that. Everyone would see it and everyone would RSVP. Oh well - it was nice while it lasted.

Tiktaalik 2y ago

People currently use Instagram stories for this a lot and it's absolutely wild how Meta hasn't caught on and built in any sort of infrastructure for you to save and keep track of events.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

giorgioz 2y ago

Yes, I was also a big Facebook user in my twenties and now I'm in my mid-thirties and it seems Facebook became a lot less useful for this decade of my life. For the birthdays of children in my social surroundings it seems the best practice has become to create an image with the details of the birthday party. Usually a photo of the birthday child with written Alice is turning 3. Join us for an afternoon of fun at Address on Saturday 16:00. Usually shared on Whatsapp either in direct messages or in an existing school group if you are inviting the whole class or in ad-hoc group created for the event literally called Alice Birthday Party