Why I'm Done With Partiful
If you haven't run into it yet, Partiful is an app for party invitations, a free and gen-z coded platform that texts your friends, collects the RSVPs, and sends the reminders, and it has become the default way many of my friends throw a party. If you've been invited to anything over text in the last year, there's a chance Partiful sent that text.
Bias warning! I'm definitely not a neutral 3rd party here. Transparently, I took a job interview with them a few months back, and this is what had me looking a little closer into the company. With peace and love, the process was a bit of a mess; a last-minute cancellation, a reschedule, a promised technical round, a booking mistake that put me on the wrong call entirely, and then two weeks of silence before I withdrew. I'm trying hard to not sound bitter about it. The point of this post isn't just to complain. I know startups fumble interviews all the time and I genuinely get it, but the accumulation of all that did one useful thing -- made me curious enough to start paying closer attention.
I'm Tired, Boss
The final straw was this text I got a few weeks later. It's a message from Partiful informing me that someone has a crush on me and that to find out who, I would simply need to download the app, pick my crush, and see if it's mutual. I think there is no crush (I mean, there probably is because I am so fun and hot and cool and sexy), but Partiful has no idea and it doesn't matter either way. The message was never really about a crush at all. It's just an A/B tested line built to manufacture one very specific feeling, wait, who?, and then to hold that feeling hostage behind an app install. The crush is the bait and the data is the business, and that "feature" was my breaking point.
None of it is coercion and all of it is designed by smart people who are good at this. And the extra frustration is that none of it is necessary. A crush can just flirt, and a host can just send an invitation. Yet Partiful has inserted itself into the middle of an exchange that worked fine for the entire history of people throwing parties.
I should be fair and admit none of this is unique to Partiful. Instagram does it. Facebook does it. Every free app you have ever loved grows by making it costly to opt out. So if that's the charge, Partiful is not special, and I won't pretend otherwise. But that's sort of my thesis here. I'm not writing this because Partiful is uniquely evil. I'm writing it because I am tired. Tired of being mined at every junction, tired of opening my phone and being made to feel bad -- like I am being left out of something and only this <thing> can fix it. Maybe it lands worse here precisely because it is so friendly about it? An ad at least feels like an ad. A "someone has a crush on you" text feels like a person, and it isn't one and it feels gross and slimy.
Follow the Money
It helps to ask how Partiful actually plans to make money. The company raised twenty million dollars in 2022 from Andreessen Horowitz, one of the largest venture firms in tech. So what is the plan for returning on this investment? The stated answer is a feature where party guests chip in on snacks and the host pays a five dollar delivery fee through Instacart, plus a little merch.
I believe those things exist. I also don't believe they are the business. A five dollar fee on a cart of seltzer is not going to satisfy investors who handed you twenty million.
The asset Partiful is really building is the network itself, the map of who knows who, who shows up to what, and whose social circles overlap. Partiful says it doesn't sell user data, and I have no evidence that it has. But "we don't sell your data" is a statement in the present tense. It is not a permanent fact about the company. It is a choice the current leadership is making, and that choice isn't binding on a future investor, a change in strategy, or whoever might buy the company someday. When the most valuable thing a company owns is a thing it has promised not to use, that promise is the only thing standing between you and the obvious sale to come.
Where I Land
I still begrudgingly RSVP using their platform. My tiny protest is that I will never download their app.
This is pretty in-line with my general strategy for dealing with these social platforms. My proposal: just text me. Or email me. Or give me a call. I promise I'll respond.