Partiful, what's so special about the best app (according to Google) of 2024?

Developed by the New York-based company of the same name and founded in 2020 by former Palantir employees Joy Tao and Shreya Murthy, Partiful is an app designed for event planning and aims to compete with the already well-known and more traditional solutions such as Evite, Eventbrite and Facebook Events widely used to advertise concerts, shows and various other initiatives by enabling the creation of invitations, circulation and collection of memberships.

Recently nominated by Google as app of the year and included in Google Play's best apps and games of 2024 list, Partiful features an intuitive design and a new way of creating invitations including a tool called Party Genie that helps to quickly design invitations and engage potential participants by sharing a simple link that is also valid for those who don't own the app: "Partiful is clearly forging itself for Gen Z culture. It is tapping into the cultural atmosphere of this younger generation. It is using their language. It's using their aesthetic,' said Katie Davis, a professor at the University of Washington and head of the Digital Youth Lab.

Interestingly, despite the fact that it is mainly used by iOS device owners, Google has chosen to nominate it as the app of 2024 in its digital store: according to data shared by analyst firm Appfigures, the app has so far reached around 1.28 million downloads globally, but only 57,835 of these were on Android devices - source: TechCrunch.

Other names mentioned by Google include AFK Journey as the best game of the year, which takes users into the shoes of the legendary wizard Merlin and into strategic battles set in the unexplored world of Esperia, the Best Multi-device App 2024 Max, which offers a wide range of TV programmes, films and original content, and the best multi-platform game of the year, the world-famous Clash of Clans, which has been distributed for more than a decade but is now even more popular thanks to its recent expansion to PCs and Chromebooks.

Other video games awarded by the Mountain View giant include Squad Busters, Eggy Party, Yes, Your Grace, Solo Leveling: Arise, Honkai: Star Rail, Tab Time World, Kingdom Rush 5: Alliancee and Cookie Run: Tower of Adventures. While, among the best apps appear: Mila by Camilla Lorentzen, UpStudy - Camera Math Solver, MacroFactor - Macro Tracker, Timeleft, Baby Daybook - Newborn Tracker, Infinite Painter, Peacock TV: Stream TV & Movies and PBS KIDS Video.