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Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

ponymessenger.com

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Re: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

#191

Post by toshk »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #188
toshk wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love your enthusiasm :). Okay from a different angle. Im sure you have thought about this: My point was referring to the challenge of moving people away from their existing communication platforms. So I wrote down some quick ideas how to move your philosophy which many of us clearly appreciated to our current workflow. Convincing individuals to your product is something you are clearly succeeding in, but for many of…

Thanks :). I am definitely enthusiastic. That's the only way. And for sure, it's hard to change behavior in general. It's been hard for me—and I made this product. Sometimes I send a message to someone and I'm like: "Why did I sent that instantly?" But I've been improving. For Pony to be successful at some kind of scale, there will need to be "influencers" (aka "leaders"?) who help makes this someone of a culturally…

Current communication platforms are so massive (sms, whatsapp, e-mail, messenger etc.) that it feels like such a huge fight to get some form of network effect, that's why I was thinking of a way of integrating with them instead of creating a completely alternative channel. But it might be possible in some niches/ influencers way.

Anyway to better clarify my initial comment. There are chrome extensions, allowing you to schedule emails at certain times. You could do a similar things were you extend chrome with an extension for Pony Gmail, where you send email on the pony time scheduled. The sending part is solvable.

Receiving however, 2 problems: - Organise receiving; not sure if it can be done, but probably its somehow possible to create a service that saves all incoming meessages and then once a day serves it to a seperate inbox

- Senders probably sometimes need sn autoresponder, that's a problem already solved.

Anyway, just brainstorming out loud. Wish you all the best.

Re: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

#192

Post by dmitryminkovsky »

emodendroket wrote: post #28

Ironically, the post used to come around several times a day.

Yep! From that exact perspective I went back and forth a lot trying to figure out whether Pony should support multiple deliveries a day. Ultimately I settled on one. I think the post used to deliver multiple times a day because instantaneous communication wasn't pervasive. Now that everything is instantaneous, I decided ultimately that one delivery a day would add more value to people's lives by offsetting all that instantaneity. It was a tough decision though...

Re: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

#193

Post by elcomet »

elischleifer wrote: post #152

As someone who lived with the pony express this brings back memories :) I like this micro-blogging distribution concept. It's like a micro substack distribution. As someone who generally abhors social networking, I like anything that has substance and limits spam.

pony express disappeared in the 1860s...

Re: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

#194

Post by Waterluvian »

I’m not sure I could rewire myself to do this but I love the idea.

I wake up in the morning and read my postcards from friends. Write a few during the day. They get “mailed” out that night.

I just need to find some friends who don’t just want to chat all day.

Is there potential for a bridge between worlds? I’m on WhatsApp with a bunch of friends. One of which will read our entire group thread once per day and provide an itemized single message response paragraphs long. I love her style. But the problem is that WhatsApp is complete junk for long form.

Re: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

#195

Post by discardedrefuse »

cloogshicer wrote: post #36

I really wish we had a unified messenger (that collects messages from Email, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, etc.) with this feature. Would be so amazing.

Matrix has bridges for a lot of other services.

https://matrix.org/bridges/

Some are in better states than others, and most will have trade-offs when it come to stickers and media. But definitely worth a look.

Re: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

#196

Post by nicoburns »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #158
floatingatoll wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is one setting where once a day delivery is beyond acceptable: Any time you would be willing to send a written letter by postal mail. For content of that nature, once a day is well beyond what's expected of the postal service. About the fastest you can exchange letters with someone by post is one week round trip, assuming a letter and a reply. It is also well-proven that humanity is able to maintain human conne…

> There is one setting where once a day delivery is beyond acceptable: Any time you would be willing to send a written letter by postal mail. Yep, that is a good heuristic! I think it could be generalized by saying that anything that isn't time-bound or time-sensitive (i.e. making plans) is fine for once-daily delivery. Everything that is time-sensitive or perhaps just quick and low-effort should be kept in the insta…

A fun anecdote:

My grandmother says that before telephones, she used to make plans by post! At that time there were 4-5 postal deliveries per day, so she could exchange messages with friends while at work to make arrangements for that evening.

Bu I agree that it’s nice to have that separation. I think email used to provide that long-form channel, but it’s too swamped by transactional rubbish these days.

Re: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

#197

Post by floatingatoll »

nicoburns wrote: post #196
dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is one setting where once a day delivery is beyond acceptable: Any time you would be willing to send a written letter by postal mail. Yep, that is a good heuristic! I think it could be generalized by saying that anything that isn't time-bound or time-sensitive (i.e. making plans) is fine for once-daily delivery. Everything that is time-sensitive or perhaps just quick and low-effort should be kept in the insta…

A fun anecdote: My grandmother says that before telephones, she used to make plans by post! At that time there were 4-5 postal deliveries per day, so she could exchange messages with friends while at work to make arrangements for that evening. Bu I agree that it’s nice to have that separation. I think email used to provide that long-form channel, but it’s too swamped by transactional rubbish these days.

That is an awesome story.

Re: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

#198

Post by discardedrefuse »

hudvin wrote: post #44

I was thinking about similar service for emails/news/forums/social networks. Main idea the same - slow updates.

For news and forum threads you might want to check out Fraidycat. Its a browser extension that handles your feeds (rss and some others). You can categorize feeds by importance (real-time, frequent, occasional, etc) and it updates the main page accordingly.

https://fraidyc.at/

Re: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

#199

Post by dmitryminkovsky »

Waterluvian wrote: post #194

I’m not sure I could rewire myself to do this but I love the idea. I wake up in the morning and read my postcards from friends. Write a few during the day. They get “mailed” out that night. I just need to find some friends who don’t just want to chat all day. Is there potential for a bridge between worlds? I’m on WhatsApp with a bunch of friends. One of which will read our entire group thread once per day and provide…

> I’m not sure I could rewire myself to do this but I love the idea.

Like anything behavior-related, it takes some time and effort. I created this because I've wanted this going on two decades, have used it for the better part of 6 months, and I still sometimes send things to on text/chat/email that could have been sent by Pony. But I do it less and less and it's been rewarding.

> Is there potential for a bridge between worlds?

I'm not sure... I am looking forward to hearing about people's experiences and what they think.

> One of which will read our entire group thread once per day and provide an itemized single message response paragraphs long. I love her style. But the problem is that WhatsApp is complete junk for long form.

She may be your go-to candidate for trying this out! I've found that people who successfully adopt Pony have at least one person who's willing to try it with them. I was even thinking of making that a prerequisite for signing up, a gimmick of sorts, that you need to sign up with someone else. My experience has also been that all these platforms—WhatsApp, email, chat (obviously)—aren't great for long form. Stuff just gets lost and buried before you respond to it, and the UIs aren't built for that. If you know someone who seems interested in that sort of communication, you might want to try it with them! Would love to know how it goes.

Re: Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

#200

Post by dmitryminkovsky »

mcbishop wrote: post #133

My significant other is my only Telegram contact — used only for urgent stuff. We used email for non-urgent communication, but I didn't like having our one-on-one writing mixed with all the outside noise. We just switched to Pony for the non-urgent stuff. I anticipate her being my only Pony contact. Anyway, I'm stoked to have Pony. Thanks!

That's awesome to hear. It's truly an honor. I'd love to hear how it goes. Please don't hesitate to report any problems.
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