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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

#21

Post by dmitryminkovsky »

malfist wrote: post #7

I love this thought process. I've gotten into the habit of only checking my email at work when I sign in and when I leave for the day. I know you don't integrate with email because of some time critical messages, but I wonder if you could still integrate as an email/sms app and allow temporary overrides (kinda like how pihole let's you pause it for 5 minutes). That'd be downright awesome

> I love this thought process.

Thank you so much.

> but I wonder if you could still integrate as an email/sms app and allow temporary overrides ... like how pihole let's you pause it for 5 minutes

I'm leaning towards avoiding that sort of thing. Like how Gmail has a "snooze" or how Apple's Screen Time has timers that lock you out, etc. That stuff really stresses me out. I tried to make this as simple as possible and as "human" as possible, in the sense that the human experience—or cognitive processes, or biological cycles—plays out on the human timescale, which seems to be more like the day or week or year than minutes or hours.

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

#23

Post by mrweasel »

gotostatement wrote: post #3

I think it's a really cool idea but you have a network effect issue. I would expect it to be hard to get enough of my friends on it for it to be useful. Integrations with existing message apps and environments would be ideal, though I'm not exactly sure how that would look.

There’s also the “issue” of people most likely also have other types of communications with the same people they’ll have on Pony. Means that you could get in a situation where most of their messages will still come in on other channels, and the all the mindfulness will quickly be lost.

It’s a great idea, but without uninstalling other messaging clients the goal of a mindful messaging life seem impossible.

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

#24

Post by tomaskafka »

gotostatement wrote: post #3

I think it's a really cool idea but you have a network effect issue. I would expect it to be hard to get enough of my friends on it for it to be useful. Integrations with existing message apps and environments would be ideal, though I'm not exactly sure how that would look.

It's very simple - just open your email client once per day. 100 % a same thing, with an existing network, using a tool you already have.

That's what I do anyway :).

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

#27

Post by dmitryminkovsky »

steelbrain wrote: post #10

Thanks for working on this. It reminds me of a social app called Slowly ( https://slowly.app/en/ ) where you write "letters" to people and they are delivered based on the approximate physical distance between them. It's common for letters across countries to take >12 or sometimes even >24 hours. It's led people to a lot of meaningful relationships/friendships, they publish some as stories: https://slowly.app/en/story…

I hadn't seen Slowly. That's awesome—thanks for sharing. I really like how it's tied to physical distance. I really want to add more delivery modes, with geographical distance being one possible factor.

For me a big deal is not just the slow delivery, but the inability to instantly send as well. The presence of a send button has this effect of making me send things that aren't ready. I don't intend Pony to encourage people to edit and edit and edit forever, but I've found in my personal usage that sometimes I write a message, put it in my outbox, and then some number of hours later I'll think of something randomly and edit it a bit. Or I'll change my mind and delete it.

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

#30

Post by jedimastert »

steelbrain wrote: post #10

Thanks for working on this. It reminds me of a social app called Slowly ( https://slowly.app/en/ ) where you write "letters" to people and they are delivered based on the approximate physical distance between them. It's common for letters across countries to take >12 or sometimes even >24 hours. It's led people to a lot of meaningful relationships/friendships, they publish some as stories: https://slowly.app/en/story…

I remember this a few years ago...I should get back into it.
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