Thursday, September 16, 2010
Evite Redesigns Site
Los Angeles-based Evite, the online invitations business which is a unit of IAC, said today that it has launched an extensive redesign of the firm's website. The service--which had been showing its age--looks to have overhauled its user interface to make it much easier and cleaner to send an invitation; has added new card designs; added social features via an "Event Conversation" product; and more. Among the social features are the ability for guests to upload pictures, ask questions, post their own announcements, poll guests, and more. The site said that--after 10 years on its old platform--it was time to bring an upgraded service to its users. Evite said it now is seeing 18 million monthly uniques, and sends out over 28,000 invitations an hour. Evite said the overhaul of the service is not done--it says its roadmap includes new mobile applications. Evite was originally launched in Silicon Valley in 1998, and was acquired by IAC in 2001 and moved to Los Angeles. The firm has seen a number of startups appear as competitors in recent years, who are applying Web 2.0 designs to the online invitations space. Those competitors have been hoping to take market share from Evite.