Yesterday, I got a real, honest-to-god printed invitation to an event next month. It is for a new location of a business, who is very active in the twitter and facebook community and has a solid following. It was well done, very elegantly put together and seemed like they put a lot of effort into it – but what surprised me was the fact that it was mailed to me.

In the last few months, I have received over a dozen beautifully designed event invitations, sent through twitter, facebook, evite and even my rss feed. All of the invitiations wanted email responses, or a virtual reply. This was the first time I had received an event invitation (other than for a family event or wedding) that was not sent via the web. What was even more strange was that they wanted a virtual reply to the mailed invite…I couldn’t just click yes, or reply, I had to actually create a new email, make sure to type the email address correctly and send out a reply. I guess I am just a little surprised that with the ease of use of a facebook event, twitter invite, evite or even creating a blog invitation, a company would spend the money (and waste the paper) to create and mail this invitation – when they already have twitter and facebook at their fingertips.

Do you still use the mail for invitations or have you moved it all to the web?