Ask HN: Would you use an email presorting service like this?

#1

Post by branko » Mon, Dec 09, 2013, 7:13 PM UTC

Hi guys, at SquareOne we've been building a more manageable mobile email experience, and through all of our customer research we came up with an interesting service model that could live on top of the platform we've built.

This is a service for people who get 100+ emails a day and can't effectively stay on top of their inbox without spending hours a day inside it. We let the person with the highest incentive to have an email reach you - the sender - do a little bit of extra work and categorize their email for you. Concept landing page:

www.squareonemail.com/mailone

What do you think?

Re: Ask HN: Would you use an email presorting service like this?

#2

Post by stevekemp » Mon, Dec 09, 2013, 9:13 PM UTC

Years ago I sent a message to a stranger. I received an auto-reply saying "I got your mail, spam is hard, click this link to deliver it and prove you're human".

For a second I thought it was a cute solution to spam, then I realized we'd be in a world of pain if we mailed each other, and both of us replied in such a fashion.

I never mailed him again.

If I have to do work to contact somebody? Well I'll just ignore that person. Sorry.

Re: Ask HN: Would you use an email presorting service like this?

#3

Post by whichdan » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 2:23 AM UTC

stevekemp wrote: post #2

Years ago I sent a message to a stranger. I received an auto-reply saying "I got your mail, spam is hard, click this link to deliver it and prove you're human". For a second I thought it was a cute solution to spam, then I realized we'd be in a world of pain if we mailed each other, and both of us replied in such a fashion. I never mailed him again. If I have to do work to contact somebody? Well I'll just ignore that…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenge%E2%80%93response_spam...

Further reading if anyone is interested in challenge-response systems.

Re: Ask HN: Would you use an email presorting service like this?

#4

Post by whichdan » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 2:24 AM UTC

So is SquareOne supposed to replace my email, or work alongside it?

Re: Ask HN: Would you use an email presorting service like this?

#5

Post by branko » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 9:43 PM UTC

whichdan wrote: post #4

So is SquareOne supposed to replace my email, or work alongside it?

SquareOne (squareonemail.com) is a standalone native iOS email client that works with your Gmail account. We're in public beta with the app now.

The experiment we posted about (we're calling it MailOne for now) would simply supplement the new email UX by an added service layer, where the sender of an email is challenged to categorize it for you as the recipient.