Apple Invites

I'm in my mid-thirties and most of my friends have ditched Facebook. I didn't really realize this until when I used it to create an event for a house party... I was somewhat surprised that only 2 people out of 15 even saw it. I ended up resorting to good old text message and that worked, but it was tedious. Not sure how popular this will become, but having a social-media-less event invite/broadcasting system would be nice, and having one that most people with an iPhone have access to covers much of my friend base

Platform fragmentation is a generational thing.

I thought email was a common denominator but I learned most people don’t check email or check it rarely. So different from the days when everyone had email.

I still use FB and so do many of my friends my age (mid to late 40s). But a bunch have also migrated to Instagram.

Among the younger generation, you’re a millennial if you’re on instagram because they’ve moved to TikTok. FB folks are over the hill. There’s a generational divide and pride in being trendy.

WhatsApp is only a thing among my international friends — many Americans don’t have it.

The only universal now is text messages but it feels so clunky (even with iMessage).

I wonder if it is rooted in similar things though. Right, like with email. People don't really read or check emails because spam became a serious problem. Then with social media, looking at facebook, there is definitely a big different in ad space in facebook between the time I used to use it to now. Where ads have effectively become the "spam" equivalent for social media. Ultimately, did success of these technologies also lead to its demise. Email was so good, so it made sense for a market of spammers. Facebook became a prime place for ads, and as ads become more and more of the platform, people started to consciously or subconsciously step away to other platforms.

I think you've hit the nail on the head of the problem.

A lot of comments online claim that people don't care about spam, or think that advertisements are a good thing for a free service, or at the very least won't change their habits if given an alternative. If that's the case then what's a better explanation for your observations?

I argue that people do care, even if it's perhaps not expressed in words.

A lot of legitimate email (password resets and stuff) gets eaten up by spam filters

We have a family email domain for my extended family, administered by a few retired but very tech-savvy relatives (both had long IT careers) and it’s roughly 50:50 whether a message sent to everyone@ lastname.com will actually show up in people’s inboxes or not. It’s probably 75:25 that a reply all to that list will show up, but modern email is a dumpster fire.

I uses the business version of Office 365 for e-mail. It works well. I never have a problem with e-mails not being delivered or going into a SPAM folder. I am not saying your family did anything wrong. What I am saying is e-mail works well for some people.