Partiful Is Putting Ticket Payments on Its Platform
Partiful Is Putting Ticket Payments on Its Platform
Partiful 在其平台上推出票务支付功能
It can’t be all party all the time. Eventually, somebody’s got to pay the piper. That looks to be the case for Partiful, the popular social events platform that people use to plan parties big and small. On Tuesday, Partiful announced its first major monetization plan in its six-year history: tickets that attendees can buy directly on Partiful.
派对不可能永远持续下去，总得有人来买单。对于广受欢迎的社交活动平台 Partiful 来说，情况似乎正是如此。人们常使用该平台来策划大大小小的派对。周二，Partiful 宣布了其六年历史中的首个重大商业化计划：用户现在可以直接在 Partiful 上购买活动门票。
Collecting payment for tickets wasn’t something the platform offered before; instead, hosts who used Partiful to plan paid events could include links that took guests off the platform to process ticket purchases elsewhere. The app will now let hosts of paid events handle the ticket-selling process directly in the app. That means processing different ticket tiers, setting capacity limits, handling payments, and verifying ticket QR codes at entry points when people show up for events. In return, Partiful gets a cut of the sales, which the host can either factor into pricing or pass on to the buyer as a fee.
此前，该平台并不提供票务收款功能；相反，使用 Partiful 策划付费活动的组织者只能添加外部链接，引导客人跳转到其他平台完成购票。现在，该应用允许付费活动的组织者直接在应用内处理售票流程。这意味着组织者可以设置不同的票务等级、设定人数上限、处理支付，并在活动现场通过扫描二维码验证门票。作为回报，Partiful 将从销售额中抽取一定比例的佣金，组织者可以选择将其计入票价，或作为手续费转嫁给买家。
Partiful CEO Shreya Murthy says that putting ticketing directly in Partiful was a way to remove some of the friction that event hosts experience when trying to get people to pay for tickets. “We built this not because we felt the need to monetize; we really built it in response to a problem that hosts were facing,” Murthy says. “This is the first big monetization feature that we’ve had on the platform, and it won’t be the last.”
Partiful 首席执行官 Shreya Murthy 表示，将票务功能直接整合进 Partiful 是为了消除活动组织者在收款时遇到的一些阻碍。“我们开发这个功能并非因为感到有商业化的压力，而是为了解决组织者们面临的实际问题，”Murthy 说道，“这是我们平台推出的第一个大型商业化功能，但绝不会是最后一个。”
Partiful was founded in 2020 by Murthy and Joy Tao, both former Palantir employees. The service really took off in the post-pandemic heyday around 2021, when people were struck with a renewed interest in going out into society. Things really panned out for Partiful in 2024, when it was the hub of invites for a Timothée Chalamet look-alike contest.
Partiful 由前 Palantir 员工 Murthy 和 Joy Tao 于 2020 年创立。该服务在 2021 年疫情后的鼎盛时期迅速走红，当时人们对重返社交生活产生了浓厚兴趣。2024 年，Partiful 迎来了高光时刻，它成为了“甜茶”蒂莫西·柴勒梅德（Timothée Chalamet）模仿大赛的邀请中心。
Partiful has been a free service since the beginning, buoyed by $27 million of venture capital funding from investors like Andreessen Horowitz. It has leveraged that to build out a platform that lets millions of users send out invites to birthday parties, block parties, trinket trades, and local city events.
自创立以来，Partiful 一直是一项免费服务，并获得了包括 Andreessen Horowitz 在内的投资者提供的 2700 万美元风险投资支持。它利用这些资金打造了一个平台，让数百万用户能够发送生日派对、社区聚会、小商品交易和本地城市活动的邀请。
On its website, a page aptly titled “How do you make money?” Partiful says its “core product is free, and always will be,” but that it will begin introducing new features that users will have the option to pay for. Tickets are the start of that. They’re also the start of what feels like a new era for Partiful, as this move seems to run counter to what the company has said about its plans before.
在其网站上，有一个标题恰如其分的页面“你们如何赚钱？”，Partiful 在上面表示其“核心产品是免费的，且永远免费”，但它将开始引入一些用户可以选择付费的新功能。门票就是其中的开端。这也标志着 Partiful 进入了一个新时代，因为此举似乎与该公司此前关于其计划的表态背道而驰。
“Partiful will not make money. There is no pitch at scale,” Partiful once posted via tweet in 2023, adding, “Investors gave us money to help u party, and that is what we are here to do. Enjoy it babes.” In a call with WIRED, Murthy said the tweet was always meant to be a joke. “It’s kind of funny how many people took it literally, and now it’s followed us around everywhere, and it’s become a meme,” Murthy said. “But it is nice to say that Partiful is monetizing now.”
“Partiful 不会赚钱。我们没有大规模盈利的打算，”Partiful 曾在 2023 年的一条推文中写道，并补充说：“投资者给我们钱是为了帮你们开派对，这就是我们的使命。尽情享受吧，宝贝们。”在与《连线》（WIRED）杂志的通话中，Murthy 表示那条推文一直是个玩笑。“很多人把它当真了，这挺有趣的，现在它到处跟着我们，甚至成了一个梗，”Murthy 说，“但很高兴能说，Partiful 现在确实开始商业化了。”
Partiful has done well partly due to its ability to channel a kind of public whimsy and weirdness people are looking to partake in. Just a cursory glance through a list of events in the Bay Area shows events like “Open Paint Night,” “Capture the Flag,” and “Bean-Up.” (The description reads, “Do you love beans?” 42 people say they are going at the time of writing.) The service has its detractors, but it has proved very popular for people looking to arrange quick get-togethers or off-kilter social experiments.
Partiful 的成功部分归功于它能够引导人们参与那种充满奇思妙想和古怪趣味的活动。随便浏览一下湾区的活动列表，就能看到“开放绘画之夜”、“夺旗游戏”和“豆子聚会”（描述写着：“你喜欢豆子吗？”撰写本文时已有 42 人表示参加）。尽管该服务也有批评者，但对于那些想要快速组织聚会或进行非主流社交实验的人来说，它非常受欢迎。
Partiful couldn’t have coasted along on good vibes alone forever. Especially when it faces challengers like Facebook Events, Apple Invites, or the hot new invite app, Luma. But the move to build out a financial future is likely to make users nervous. Enshittification is en vogue, after all, and users have seen service after service get bogged down by growth-driven monetization machinations that eventually bloat the experience and alienate its users.
Partiful 不可能永远只靠良好的氛围维持下去，尤其是在面临 Facebook Events、Apple Invites 或热门新邀请应用 Luma 等竞争对手时。但这一构建财务未来的举措可能会让用户感到不安。毕竟，“平台腐烂”（Enshittification）正流行，用户已经目睹了一个又一个服务被增长驱动的商业化手段所拖累，最终导致体验臃肿并疏远了用户。
“I would contend that with the launch of ticketing, this is an act of unshittification,” Murthy says. “The experience today is janky for hosts, and it’s janky for guests. That process that people were already going through is now streamlined directly in Partiful.”
“我认为，随着票务功能的推出，这反而是‘去腐烂化’（unshittification）的行为，”Murthy 说，“目前的体验对组织者和客人来说都很糟糕。人们原本就在经历的流程，现在在 Partiful 中得到了直接的简化。”
Murthy says she wants Partiful to focus on smaller, community-oriented events, rather than take direct aim at ticket behemoths like AXS or Ticketmaster that run ticket sales for larger events. The immediate plan isn’t to become a platform that sells Taylor Swift Eras tour tickets, though when asked if that’s the goal, Murthy is not not down. “Look, if Taylor Swift reads this article, please print that I would love for her to have her concert on Partiful,” Murthy says. “She can have her people contact my people.”
Murthy 表示，她希望 Partiful 专注于规模较小、以社区为导向的活动，而不是直接瞄准 AXS 或 Ticketmaster 这种负责大型活动票务的巨头。目前的计划并不是要成为销售泰勒·斯威夫特（Taylor Swift）巡演门票的平台，尽管当被问及这是否是目标时，Murthy 并不排斥。“听着，如果泰勒·斯威夫特读到了这篇文章，请帮我刊登出来：我很乐意让她在 Partiful 上举办演唱会，”Murthy 说，“让她的人联系我的人就行。”