When Emily King, from San Jose, Calif., began planning her daughter’s first birthday party, she never dreamed she would be faced with accommodating 487 guests. That’s exactly what happened when the 30-year-old teacher used Evite — a digital invitation service — on her phone. When she saw the prompt “Import contacts,” she thought it meant import her contacts so she could select invitations from the list of names. Instead, Evite imported all 487 of her contacts and sent them an invitation to the birthday party. “Not only did I invite my boss and all of my coworkers, I invited all the people whose names have been stored in my phone,” said Emily. When she posted the mistake on social media, she received 24,000 comments. “This should qualify you for the witness protection program,” one user joked. Evite just happened to see Emily’s post and reached out to her. The company said that while they have several steps in place so things like this don’t happen, Emily’s journey inspired them to initiate something they now call the “Emily Hotfix” that removes the “select all” function from the app. Additionally, Evite sent Emily $500 worth of DoorDash gift cards to help pay for the bigger party. Fortunately, Emily said many guests didn’t actually RSVP, for which she is grateful. As it turned out, a mere 70 guests attended the birthday party.
