05 Feb
What is Apple Invites, and why is it making waves in the event industry?
The event planning community was thrown into an uproar recently by the news that the first big name in tech has thrown it’s hat into the event software ring. Apple Invites, a new casual event planning app designed for small B2C events and casual gatherings, was announced by the company on February 4th (after a few months of whispers and speculations among the event prof community).
As the first events-related product from a Big 4 tech company since the heyday of Facebook Events (remember those?), the takes came quickly among event industry leaders:
While the speculation and predictions roll out in waves, here’s what you need to know about Apple’s foray into event planning.
How does Apple Invites work?
Here are some of the primary features announced by Apple during their initial rollout of the app:
- Users can create simple digital invitations using photos from their gallery or from the app’s library of backgrounds.
- Integrations with Maps + Weather to provide real-time updates for attendees.
- The ability for participants to contribute photos + videos to a “shared album”, letting hosts + attendees essentially crowdsource event memories.
- Collaborative playlists from Apple Music subscribers to create an “event soundtrack”.
- Basic event management features like sharing an RSVP link with invitations, custom event previews, and track RSVPs.
What types of events can Apple Invites be used for?
Based on the initial rollout of features, it seems like Apple has set sights primarily on casual or smaller events (like birthday parties, work meetups, friend gatherings, and more). The lack of advanced event management features (such as detailed event registration tools, event check-in, advanced event ticketing etc.) seems to make it clear that the focus here was much more on form and simplistic use cases, over chasing the large-scale events that are often the domain of specialized event software platforms.
So what does this mean for the existing event software landscape?
- Simple event planning tools like Evite, Paperless Post, and Partiful have a significant new competitor. Partiful especially, given its framing around SMS and phone-based event planning, seems to be squarely in Apple’s crosshairs here.
- While Apple has noted that non-Apple users can easily attend hosted events on its platform, the native elements of the app make it clear that this will make bigger waves in countries with larger Apple device market share.
- As noted in some early takes from event profs, Apple also clearly sees this as a play for keeping Apple users more firmly within the Apple ecosystem – more data and time spent on Apple devices via event planning and attendance, and the ability to highlight other Apple products (like Apple Music) via their integrations with Apple Invites.
So what comes next for Apple Invites?
With the news only days old, speculation will continue to grow around the impact of Apple Invites on the larger event software industry. A few open questions to consider:
- How much effort and resources will Apple devote to expanding the feature set beyond the user-friendly but limited interface?
- How do existing players serving similar event use cases respond to a huge, well-resourced competitor entering the space they occupy?
- Do other tech giants make similar plays to keep their own users in-platform (looking at you, Google + Meta)?
- Will Apple start to explore potential acquisitions to simplify adding new features that might help boost the app and broaden its potential user base?
