[cleverwebble]

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

[wenc]

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).

[tcmart14]

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.

[ojhughes]

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

[stevage]

I'm in my mid 40s, my friends mostly use email for organising events more than a week or two in the future, google chat or WhatsApp for more spontaneous things.

Very occasional FB invites for things when casting the net wide, like, I'm back in town and having a picnic, everyone come.

[leptons]

My wife is late 40s and just deleted her facebook account, and she's the most FOMO person I know - and she did this because of zuck capitulating to trump. A lot of people have had it with companies supporting fascists.

[throw0101d]

> 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.

[2muchcoffeeman]

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.

[smackeyacky]

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.

[ninininino]

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).

[Reason077]

In fact, Apple Invites appears to be a direct response to the popularity of Partiful.

[Analemma_]

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.

[wenc]

Partiful works but to me it lacks polish. It feels like MySpace when FB first came out.

[nlh]

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.

[crossroadsguy]

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]

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.

[pridkett]

> 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.

[anton96]

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.

[giorgioz]

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

[Mindwipe]

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]

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.

[Tiktaalik]

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.

[talldayo]

> 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]

What would a standard for party invites be?

ics files and CalDAV are sort of an Apple standard.

[nozzlegear]

Why are you intentionally misrepresenting what they said?