How Partiful made inviting cool again by sending follow-up text messages.

In 2024 the event is So back. Block party, birthday party, bris – you name it, people throw it.

As the American psyche finally shakes off the fear of gatherings that was ingrained during the pandemic, people are yearning to be together in a room again. Whether it’s to raise a glass, dust off a chat, or simply breathe easy on each other.

Enter Partiful, Evite’s successor, fit for a more digital, highly connected world. While Evite was an email version of paper mail, Partiful is more of a combination of social media and the most active group chat.

Now an app, the platform has started in a web format. Invitees are sent a link that takes you to the “party page.” There, you can find the title of the event, usually with a photo, a short description, and the date and time. After entering your name and phone number and selecting “yes,” “no,” or “maybe,” you can see who else is participating.

How Partiful Brings Online Invitations to Life

“What’s really close to my heart is just making people understand party culture better,” says Shreya Murthy, one of Partiful’s founders. She hopes the party will be transformed not just into a symbol of frivolity, but a meaningful social experience.

She and co-founder Joy Tao came up with the idea for Partiful just before the pandemic. Just as they were starting to build it, the world shut down. But they moved forward, determined to create a product they both wanted when the pandemic ended.

By the summer of 2021, people were hungry to be around each other again. The two introduced the platform to their friends, and it soon began to spread like telephone, first in New York, where Murthy and Tao live, and then across the country.

While the platform may be hot on the market right now, Murthy says the usage curve hasn’t been marked by steady growth, but rather by spikes or bumps as it began to make its way into a new location. “What I hear most often when I talk to users, whether they’re hosts or guests, is that there was a point where no one was using Partiful, and then there was a point where everyone started using it overnight.” Murthy didn’t provide specific numbers, but said the number of users has grown from the low millions in 2023 to the high millions in 2024.

That’s what happened to me. In 2022, I got invited to a housewarming party for a college friend. I’ve been to parties seventy-two times and hosted four times (the platform tracks your stats), Partiful is the foundation of my social life.

Partiful has invited me to book clubs, Friendsgivings, housewarming parties, and slumber parties (no, they’re not just for teens). But the gatherings never go by those names. The book club is “Hot Girls Read,” the one-on-one with a friend is “Kvetch-Athon,” and the first party of the summer is “Roof Function II: The Most Outside.”

High and low tone at the same time

On the surface, Partiful seems like something that would appeal to an older, more mature audience — it lets guests RSVP and indicate whether they plan to bring a +1, giving hosts the ability to plan ahead. The feature, which launched in March, lets invitees indicate times that work best for them, and texting capabilities let hosts reach out to attendees at any time with updates. So why is it so popular with Gen Z?

Some of that is marketing, says Michelle Weinberger, a Northwestern professor who studies consumer behavior. “They use a lot of cool signals, the language they use is much younger,” she explains. “On their website, they talk about warehouse parties, which is definitely not something your mom is talking about anymore.”

Partiful also bills itself as a party app rather than an invitation site, which “changes the narrative a bit,” Weinberger says. It’s a club you join, rather than a tool you use to plan ahead (although it’s really both).

Dr. Zizi Papacharissi, chair of the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago, says the app’s new features have made other platforms look “a little old-fashioned, a little trite, a little boring.”

It could also help solve the loneliness problem that has gripped the country.

American adults reported feeling lonely at least once a week in a recent survey by the American Psychiatric Association. And that increased among those aged 18 to 34, who reported feeling lonely every day or several times a week.

While we’re technically more connected than ever, forming social connections is still more complicated for younger generations — and the pandemic has only made things worse. Weinberg says some may have missed that “drive-in” moment, where you practice socializing. Services like Partiful may be able to create opportunities for that more seamlessly.

Text messages will let you know if you can bring your own alcohol

When you RSVP through Partiful, you’re automatically signed up for “text messaging,” which allows hosts to text you your door code, BYOB instructions, dress code details, or any other info you can think of.

“It removes some of the barriers to creating the social experiences that people want,” Weinberger says. “The text messaging element relies on that informality.”

As Murthy explains, eliminating barriers was a key design goal.

“It made scheduling these meetings feel like a chore,” Murthy says of the pre-Partiful process. You might have to send individual text messages or, worse yet, squeeze a bunch of unrelated friends into a giant group chat to schedule, inevitably inviting someone to send you an unsolicited GIF while you try to work out the details.

People needed help with logistics, Murthy and Tao concluded, but that’s not funny. So how did Partiful appeal to the notoriously carefree generation With its “I don’t care”?

Dr. Papacharissi points to three reasons. The first is the app’s ability to differentiate itself from its predecessors, whose “design is not in line with today’s social customs,” he says. The second is privacy. People don’t want to share a lot of personal information because they fear it could be used by third parties, Papacharissi says. Partiful requires only a phone number and says it doesn’t sell user data. The third is its ability to operate across platforms.

Planning a party is a serious matter

Partiful is based out of a small coworking space in Brooklyn. When I visited, I got the impression that the place wasn’t a burgeoning party conglomerate, but rather a group of young people cooking up something new.

The company isn’t publicly traded yet, and the service is free, which begs the question: How do they make money? In November 2022, they secured $20 million in a Series A funding round. “We are fortunate that we are very well capitalized and haven’t had to raise funding since late 2022,” Murthy said in an email.

While she said the company is currently focused solely on product development, she said there are plans to start making money in the future. In the FAQ section of its website, Partiful says it plans to offer “party perks” like disposable cameras, and invites users to share ideas for products to feature.

The trick for the company will be to grow while avoiding the fate of party-planning platforms like Eventbrite and Facebook events, which are seen as more passé by Partiful’s current target audience. But “as long as it can maintain the trust of its users and not be, for example, an app that helps large companies plan parties, it will maintain its appeal,” Pappacharisi says.

It’s my party and I’ll take it seriously if I want to

Partiful has added even more new features since my visit, including “Party Genie,” a section of the app where you can choose a “vibe” like “chill” or “trending,” and it spits out a party theme for you. When I choose the “dinner party” category, Partiful suggests a dip night, where all attendees bring dip or a dip vehicle.

The common denominator among many of the “suggested” events is that they aren’t built around milestones. That’s intentional. Murthy tells me that her greatest accomplishment is that Partiful “elevates everyday social moments into something people take seriously.”

“Once an app comes along that tells us we can have parties for the little things in life, and makes that interaction easier and more structured, it’s a lot easier to imagine that happening,” Weinberger explains.

You had a housewarming party, why not cool the house? Need to get rid of old clothes? Organize a clothes swap.

Perhaps a generation so bound by social isolation feels the need to go to extremes: there should be a party at all times.

Papacharissi adds to this by pointing out that you don’t have to socialize with the people you meet through Partiful. It has “very low social support,” he says, and “the return on that social support is impressive.”

If Partiful redefines the party itself, the social implications could follow suit. Soon, couples might meet not at a wedding but at a sequel night (movie night, but only sequels) or a lease renewal party.

Laugh all you want, but I was invited to that last party in July and no one even noticed the topic.