Evite is a great tool but it’s one of the most bloated web apps too.
I was trying to get my weekly volleyball invites that I sent via evites switched over to Facebook events. I even created a Facebook page for our volleyball club to get my peeps over there. But, it turns out that Facebook is blocked at most of their workplaces.
So, I was venting my frustration in Twitter and the kind folks at @Yarplet sent me a tweet about Yarp.com. New web services make me feel like a kid in a candy store.
So, for this week’s volleyball game, I sent out a Yarp instead of an eVite. So far, I like it.
What is Yarp?
Yarp is a a very simple invitation/survey web application. When I say simple, it is so simple that you don’t even need a login to create and send invites. Same goes for the recipients. Individual machines are tracked via cookies.
Lets see how Yarp works. As you see in the screenshot, the home page gives you an option to create one of the 2 kinds of yarplets – Invitation or Survey. The only difference is a survey doesn’t let you post a guest count.
So it fits for those times when I try to decide which park we want to play volleyball this weekend whereas I’d use an invitation to get a headcount for the game.
You create a Yarplet in 3 steps: Name the event, add the content, choose possible responses and you are done. Now, your event gets a unique URL in Yarp and you can share this url with your folks by emailing them or sharing it via IM or even Twitter.
I have an email group in my Gmail for volleyball and I just sent the Yarp url out to them.
When your recipient clicks on the Yarp URL they can quickly respond and also start a comment thread. This is excellent as you get a timeline with the comments just like in a blog. We have a comment thread thats already 17 comments deep!
And if you sent out the Yarp, you can see your past Yarplets on the left side. Also, on the right side of the screen you will see an option to save your Yarplets. You do this by saving a unique Yarp URL created just for you so you can access your Yarplets from other computers or even from the same computer if you cleared your browser cookies.
I save it in my Firefox bookmarks and have it synced across all my computers with the Xmarks Firefox extension.
Will you like Yarp?
If you have used Evite, you might be wondering what you might miss in Yarp. Remember I said Yarp is simple? It boils down to having the simple functionality of being able to send an invite and receive responses. Nothing less and nothing more. You won’t get the invitation design based on the occasion. You won’t get an address book to store your contacts.
If your needs are simple and everytime you try to set up an Evite you cringe at the bloat, Yarp will do it for you. I will still use Evite when I need the additional bells and whistles. But, I can see myself using Yarp more often this summer and may be well past it.
What do you think? Will you give Yarp a shot for your next event?
Update: If you are looking for an Evite alternative that is a little bit more robust with its feature set, check out my Anyvite review.
Great write up. We really appreciate it.
You are welcome, Ryan. Thanks for such a cool web app. It’s really neat.
Yeah, Evite is a great tool , I will use it, thanks for sharing, buy maybe after read this post I will use your reccomendation, yarp (strange name LOL) 🙂
Evite always seems a bit cluttered to me, Yarp is what I’ve been searching for. Great post, thanks 🙂
Thanks for the useful info. It’s so interesting
Evite is a bit better, imho, but Yarp can be a great replacement.