Have you ever found yourself out on a Friday night, hungry and without a reservation, only to find that all the nearby restaurants seem to have hour-long waits?

This week, Invoke released a new app with The Onion’s The A.V. Club to solve just this problem: WaitList is an iPhone app that tells you just how long you’ll have to wait at nearby restaurants, bars, and clubs.

Now, you can bypass restaurants’ long lines and get to your meal faster! Through the app, users can submit wait time tips, which are also published on the WaitList’s twitter, @waitlist. In addition to viewing wait times, you can also share notes on what to eat or drink at different venues. The app uses foursquare’s API to help you find places close to you or search for your destination.

Inspiration for the app came after the team at The A.V. Club, an entertainment newspaper and website published by The Onion, was sick and tired of waiting for over an hour at their favorite gourmet hot dog joint in Chicago. They developed a Chicago tip line and Twitter feed to outsmart wait lines all over the city, and a year later, worked with Invoke to develop this first nationwide WaitList app. Read more on Mashable and Lifehacker.

Check it out on iTunes for yourself, and never worry about standing hungry in the entrances of restaurants ever again!

Hello world! I’m excited to say that I’ve just joined the Invoke team as of yesterday, as Director of Communications.

As a “digital native” and someone that loves to stay in-the-know about the latest startups and social technologies, I’ve always been interested the fresh ideas and fast-moving companies. Over the past few years, I’ve been fortunate to work with many startups that fit into this category — small companies that are growing fast and disrupting markets — and helping them tell their stories to the media.

Now, with Invoke, I’ll be joining a team that’s on the cutting edge of what a digital shop should be today. I’m lucky to be joining Invoke at such a busy, fruitful time (I see stories everywhere!), and everyone has been so welcoming and helpful as I get up to speed with all the campaigns and launches that are underway!

I hope you will follow my additions to the Invoke Blog and you can also find me tweeting at @mikomercer.

Excited for the journey ahead!

First and foremost, a huge congratulations to our HootSuite boys and girls for a fantastic and much anticipated launch of their freemium model. The entire team deserves a boat-load of credit after the time and work they invested in making HootSuite the best Twitter client. Period.

As HootSuite’s parent company, we’re happy to humbly state that there are some pretty exciting things happening with Invoke as well. A few of our fine ladies and gents are gunning to get their panel applicaitons accepted for SXSW 2011, so they can represent some of the amazing things getting done within our four walls.

… But we need your help!

If you are so inclined, our loyal blog reader, please take 30 seconds to follow the following three steps.

1. Create a panel picker account at: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/users/register?return=/

2. Vote for each panel:

a) Creating Corporate Campaigns in Facebook – WTF? with Sian Pairaudeau and Andre Liem

b) Das Stiletto: Discovering Ladykind in the Social Web with Grace Carter and Nadia Nascimento

3. Vote every morning until August 27th, 2010

If you’d like a reminder, please feel free to subscribe to this Google Calendar, which is set to remind you at 9:45 every morning.

Thank you to everyone for your support!

Happy Friday! To wrap up the week, here is a quick list of our favourite finds on Twitter this past week.

Follow Invoke for top news stories involving: social media marketing, agency, tech, mobile, widgets, design, and more:

GigaOm:  Open Thread: Is Social Networking Making Your Life Better? http://dlvr.it/2KTrB
jbillingsley: RT @invoke: How To Use Photos To Sell More Online – Smashing Magazine http://ow.ly/27fUi
webappstorm: 10 Reasons I’m Switching from TweetDeck to HootSuite – http://j.mp/d8t3rV
Lovesocial: Via @CNN, today’s “Intriguing Person” is #GASLAND creator Josh Fox. (You’re intriguing everyday, Josh.) http://ow.ly/28WxY @gaslandmovie

Follow memelabs for the latest in video advertising, video contests, UGC, viral videos:

NewTeeVee:  YouTube’s Big Bet for Connected Devices: Leanback http://dlvr.it/2Pmjz
Current: Viral Video Film School Pop Quiz: What is this man doing with two machine guns? http://su.pr/2baZYO
memelabs: Enjoying watching the Trevor Project #bethechange videos? Go check them out!! http://ow.ly/25lkz Mashable: Double Rainbow Meme Takes Web by Storm [Randomly Viral] – http://ow.ly/28Kzn

Follow Vidrollr for insight into social TV, interactive TV, branded advertising, audience commenting, and participatory media:

nickbilton: Don’t Look for a TV in Television’s Future via @nickbilton for @NYTimes http://ow.ly/28MVP Perfect profile on how social TV is a reality
Engadget: Netflix adds Relativity Media to its Instant queue, takes on HBO and Showtime http://bit.ly/dvRsPt
Mediapost: MTVN Gets Game With Social Express: MTV Networks has acquired Social Express, a social gaming development company. http://bit.ly/cPVbgY
mashable: Is Apple Planning to Offer Streaming TV Episodes? – http://ow.ly/29hnM

Last week, Agency Record interviewed Invoke partner Dario Meli for the series On The Record.  The open format interview touches on Dario’s role at Invoke, HootSuite, Vidrollr as well as the future of Twitter and social media.

AR: Introduce us to yourself, your roll and your company.

Dario: My name is Dario Meli and I, along with David Tedman, run Invoke Media. My responsibilities are on the strategy and revenue generation side. Translation: I run sales and marketing.

AR: In one sentence, sum up your job.

Dario: When not working with my team to create best-in-class web-apps I form strategic partnerships with ad agencies and brands and make sure they are impeccably serviced*.

*Servicing clients isnt talk or nice dinners. It’s accomplishing business objectives and having a hell of a lot of fun doing it!

AR: You are a multi-venture man, so lets start at the core – tell us about starting Novare Res and the 2006 merger with Invoke Media.

Dario: This was very simple. Novare was more design oriented and focused on working with socially responsible organizations. Invoke was more technical but with the same core values. Complimentary skill-sets made working together obvious. It only took one afternoon coffee on a patio for Ryan and I to see it made sense. The rest was just paperwork.

AR: On to Hootsuite then, I know you are closely involved with the platform – take us from its beginnings through to its current success.

Dario: HootSuite, like all Invoke applications, was born out of a need to efficiently execute campaigns for our clients. It started with scheduling tweets and we quickly saw the opportunity to create a central dashboard suitable for a marketing team to really understand what was happening around brands from a social perspective. Monitoring, participation, and measurement have always been at the core. Check out the latest release. It’s just excellent.

AR: Vidrollr is a social video platform you are involved with, how does the platform leverage social aspects and how does it measure social ROI?

Dario: Vidrollr is a unique animal in that it fits into a few different holes. We’re combining it with traditional social media streams to create a social TV tool we call a Social Viewing Companion. It’s slightly under wraps right now but if anybody wants to see an excellent 2-screen approach to engaging and increasing television viewers they should contact me. ROI is measured using a few engagement metrics.

AR: What challenges have you overcome while both helping run a company and launch multiple platforms, what has been you most enduring lesson learned?

Dario: Running a small company with multiple products and services is certainly interesting but the biggest challenge is focus. Once HootSuite was allowed to completely focus on itself and no longer be distracted by some of the other Invoke products it simply rocketed forward. You can expect to see that exact same scenario at least twice this year with two different products. It is about to get very exciting especially for Memelabs, our contesting platform that is about to re-launch in a major way.

AR: How do you stay on top of emerging trends and keep your team informed and motivated?

Dario: Identifying emerging trends for the most part is pretty easy. Anybody can talk about whats going to be hot. Invoke excels in the execution within the context of the trends. We create excellent tools that address the needs of marketers who want to capitalize on the emerging trends, thereby getting a jump on competition, looking cool, and actually accomplishing business goals.

Keeping the team motivated and excited comes from the drive to make the best products available. They all have a voice and a say in the matter and each person contributes their absolute best. I couldn’t be more proud of the people I work with.

AR: Being a true twitterati, with such a unique view on the platform – where do you see it going next?

Dario: Twitter is wrapping things up and taking more control of their platform. Good for them! Tighter restrictions allow for more innovation, not less. Long gone are the days of simply producing another means of tweeting. There is no value in that. So what is next? It’s clear that Twitter has serious ambitions in the geo space, that’s no mystery, but I am as excited as anybody to see if they can take it to a new level and not merely replicate/integrate existing check-in style functionality. That would be boring.

AR: Will Twitter see rivals in the future?

Dario: Even back in the day when they were down as much as up nobody could unseat them. I would say that anybody posing a serious threat to Twitter will have to come from a completely different place.

…

AR: Leave us with a little inspiration or word of wisdom for our readers:

Dario: Ha, I’m going straight-up corny on this one but it’s legit: be genuine, be excellent. There is no more room in this world for half-assed attitudes or products. Have an opinion, don’t be afraid to offend but don’t be afraid to sway either. Fluidity reigns supreme but there is a fine line between being fluid and being irrelevant.

Saving some of the best questions for last, Agency Record seeks out Dario’s views on the future of Twitter and social media.  Be sure to check out the full article here and feel free to leave Dario your questions & comments below.

Want more information regarding Invoke’s Social Viewing Companion, Vidrollr, memelabs or our social media services? Contact us here.