IRL Social Apps Bring People Together

Platforms such as Partiful and Timeleft are using their apps as a jumping off point to get people to meet IRL… and they’re finally taking off in popularity.

The Big Picture: Plenty has been written about how social media has made people more connected than ever, but also lonelier than ever. While there’s been many benefits of creating digital communities, people have come to the realization that physical communities are essential.

Behind the Apps: 2025 may be the year of the get-together.

• Events app Partiful was named Google’s 2024 “app of the year” …and, more importantly, was even used to organize the now-famous Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest.
• Timeleft, a European platform that organizes weekly dinners in over 60 countries, expanded to the US earlier this year… and already has 20,000 people using it.
• Posh, a platform that offers a feed of nearby events, raised $22 million from Goodwater Capital this year.

Final Invitation: Angel investor and VC Zehra Naqvi told Insider that IRL social apps can be split into two buckets — event-focused apps for hosts and attendees that work way better than a Facebook Event invite (Partiful) and apps that organize “whimsical” events that attract people from their sheer uniqueness (Timeleft). 

Like social-media apps before them, monetizing these apps is a problem to be figured out later. But we wouldn’t be surprised if many of them generate revenue by launching their own branded-events with a paid-subscription package.

In other words, it’s the rise of the “Parties as a Service” economy.