I get a lot of party invites by Evite, and it's very frustrating. I've missed some events because they refuse to improve their interface.

When I get event invites, I save them to a mail folder. Then I can browse the mail folder later to check dates. If I am not in front of my calendar (which alas is not available everywhere) I can go back and enter items I save.

When I am on the road, sometimes my connectivity is bursty. That means I download mail and read it offline. But this is useless with Evites, as they don't tell you anything about the event except a usually vague title if you are offline. After that it's easy to forget you needed to go back and re-read the thing while online. Almost all other invites I get put the party date into the subject line, as it should be.

I've complained to Evite several times about this. So have many other people. They say they "are taking it under advisement." One friend pushed Evite (using the threat of spam complaint, which is not really valid here) to put in a block so she doesn't get evites. Her friend get told to send her a direct invitation. I've concluded that since this change is pretty easy to do, Evite has decided deliberately to be user-unfriendly here, in order to get more people to click on the links to see the ads.

While Google gets a lot of ribbing over the "don't be evil" mantra, the truth is it started out with a simple principle like this one. Don't do things deliberately against user interest because it seems they might generate a bit more advertising revenue. Examples of this sort of "evil" include pop-up ads, animated ads and paying for search results, which are all things other sites did. I would have hoped more companies would have learned the lesson of that, and try to emulate the successful strategy of Google. No luck, at least with Evite.

Do don't be Evite. If you use their product, stuff at least the date, and if necessary the place, into what they consider the short title of the party, even if you must shorted the title. Yes, you will then enter it again, but your guests will thank you.