Comment by mvkel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mvkel | Hacker News Reader

We tried solving this problem in 2007 with the "plans" functionality in the first iteration of Localist. It's definitely a tough nut to crack, as a website/app will never beat the convenience/accessibility of email.

Here's the biggest issue we ran into, which I'm not sure WhereBerry has solved either:

Let's say Julie wants to see Fast Five (ugh), and she wants to know which of her friends would like to attend. At first, she considers using WhereBerry, as it's designed for such things. But wait, Julie's friend Joe doesn't have an iPhone. And I know her other friend Steve doesn't use social networking sites besides Facebook. Julie resolves to just send an email out to everyone, so she knows she'll get a response from everyone she wants to talk to in one step. Plus, she already has everyone's email address.

See the problem? Julie is forced to isolate her non-WhereBerry friends, or invite some on WhereBerry, and others via email (huge inconvenience). This isn't solving the problem. It's compounding it. Let's say WhereBerry tries to "solve" this problem by allowing Julie to invite non-members via email. We tried that, too. While it sounds good on paper, nobody wants to send their friends an email saying "Hey I want to go to this movie. Join WhereBerry to tell me your response!" In reality, they'll probably text Julie saying "Sure, I can go! Why didn't you just text me?"

It doesn't matter if 95% of your friends are signed up to WhereBerry. You'd need 100% to get people to use it in any consistent form.

It's not a tough problem to discover, as many products have attempted to solve it. But, no company has succeeded, specifically because of the scenario posed above. I wish WhereBerry luck, but I think it needs to solve the problem before being a "cool plan-making utility." There are millions of those.

Did you try not requiring sign ups to respond? Invitees should be able to click yes or no and automatically create an account for them.

I had a similar thought as well, except no automatic sign up. What if the sent email had a reply-to address specific to the event?

In the event invite email you could have a short message that tells the person can just reply to the email with a 'Yes/No/Maybe' in the subject and any thoughts or questions in the body. The service would then show the appropriate response on Julie's event. 'Maybe' responses would be marked somehow to show they need manual review and Julie would be able to see the the response text from the email and easily set the status for that person.

To help make it simpler, for people that don't change the subject you could default to a 'maybe/review' response or try language processing on the response text.

Combine this with your idea of including links in the email for a quick response and I think it could work.

Being able to interact with the app without signing app is something we've wanted to do.

We chose to get it out the door first so we have a larger user base to learn from, but hopefully we'll get to it soon.

Great suggestion!

From my experience of facebook - I'd say aggregating or having the choice of aggregating all the email would be really nice. So instead of a So-and-so is doing X, would you like to join them? You could have - Your friends are planning the following things this week/later this month. Reply with subject X to join in.

We do this -- a digest email of sorts. It's very handy. Still requires the user to have a friends list, though.

Cool. I guess I should sign up before suggesting stuff :o)

Also, "maybe" is an awful response that no RSVP app should have. 99% of "maybe" responses are people who feel guilty about saying "no"

Yes, we did a "token" approach where a non-user could RSVP via yes/no links in the email. Unfortunately, the problem is further up the chain -- the event host needs to know sign ups AREN'T required before they even start making an event. It's more than just a/b testing some "warning" language, too.

I think you're right. Even places that allow you to invite/interact with non-registered users - I usually don't. I don't know their email so I'd have to look it up. Even if it interfaced with gmail to pull my contacts, I definitely wouldn't trust it. Nor would I necessarily trust the service enough to expose my friend's email in the first place.

The problem is even more higher up than "trust," as it's the simple fact that at this point, you're well beyond the convenience of email/fb message.

Why would a person go to the trouble of filling out everything on WhereBerry, connect their Gmail, connect their Facebook, go through both lists, etc.? The only thing WhereBerry has done is introduce an extra step without adding any incentive to do so. The event host is still getting the same information that they would if they posted on their FB wall, or shot an email out.

I hate beating up on WhereBerry, but this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to figuring out this problem. We went well beyond these first steps and still didn't figure it out.

Hey mvkel, thanks for the great perspective. I totally agree that email is still easier for something like Fast Five.

We see WhereBerry as most useful for less mainstream things (Inside Job, Cambodian restaurant, Lebowski play) where you want to do it, but don't know who might want to join you. WhereBerry helps you gain some momentum, at which point you can organize it via email.

Did you see any of that kind of activity? I'd love to chat briefly if you want to get in touch at feedback@.

I don't see how my example above is any less relevant if the event is less mainstream.

Ultimately, users want to publish their plans where most of their friends will see them. That is Facebook. Ever think about putting the app on FB, vs. rolling your own?

You, sir, have a chicken and egg problem.

Great point of view.

Although it does surprise me a little. Among my friends, I don't think we ever use email to organize things like going to see a concert. Or really, anything.

And I doubt I have more than 10 friends' emails at this point. ALL my communication with (non-business) friends happens on Facebook.

Is it very common among other people to organize things by email?

Facebook and email are interchangeable terms these days. They both have the same core functionality ;

mvkel, what would you say are the best 'cool plan-making utilities'?

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