Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 203 posts

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#81

Post by jlees »

jabelk wrote: post #53
verisimilidude wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently gave serious thought to building something similar to a rolodex social network, but eventually poked too many holes in it to follow through. I'd just come back from a conference at which I'd been asked for business cards by lots of people, maybe a hundred. Of all those people, I only really cared to hear back from a few. Though it's nice to have my name out there and be cordial in the industry, I wanted to…

This is totally off the cuff, but here's my first thought: To sign up for the site, you need only a username, password, and verification method (email/sms/facebook/something to authenticate you as a person, but this wouldn't necessarily be tied to the account). The usernames are unique, and your personal url is domain.com/username or something along those lines (like reddit). Then you can give your business card to e…

Hmm, a kind of double opt-in? (Or possibly triple if you count handing out the card in the first place.)

Interesting idea, at the same time there are ways to replicate this today in terms of 'send me a blind message on Facebook/LinkedIn and I'll maybe reply' and it doesn't seem to work well, at least not in my experience. It's about the power dynamic, fundamentally.

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#82

Post by dragonwriter »

nchuhoai wrote: post #77

This brings up a point I think about a lot: Is email our last success in popularizing an open and federated standard? Maybe you can count OAuth, but IMO i have low confidence that we'll in the near future be able to collaborate on an open protocol so that many benefits of email such as control without vendor lock-in can be enjoyed. We have too many entrenched interests by the main players. I have been working briefly…

> Is email our last success in popularizing an open and federated standard?

If you mean one with a distinct and separate S2S/federation protocol (SMTP) from the main C2S protocol(s) (POP/IMAP), probably.

OTOH, it could just be that separate S2S protocols are less favored in the first place -- the web is newer than email, open, and federated (in that web servers -- but doesn't have a separate S2S protocol. A web server that needs information from another web server to do its job uses HTTP just like any other client.

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#83

Post by bfung »

timjahn wrote: post #18
jabelk wrote: post #15

Wholeheartedly agree with the article. I have absolute control of my inbox with filters, labels, and signing up for newsletters and/or updates on various subjects. There is no way a centralized end-to-end service is going to eclipse email for me, unless they radically change their business models. The value proposition is just really bad in all the services I've seen so far. "Oh, you want me to sign up for your servi…

"Something I would pay for: a rolodex social network. No centralized feed. No useless info. Your profile is 2-3 sentences and your current city (with some sort of maps integration for when you travel, to see who's near you). Two buttons, one to request to view resume, and another to request to view email. That's it. With the idea being, you use the site to enable you to keep up with people. You add people you know or…

the UI is a bit off, but doesn't Google+ circles provide this functionality?

Or the "Notes" section in the Contacts app on iPhone?

Or LinkedIn even?

What is missing or wrong with the current social network/address book things?

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#84

Post by jlees »

kasey_junk wrote: post #51
jabelk wrote: post #15

Wholeheartedly agree with the article. I have absolute control of my inbox with filters, labels, and signing up for newsletters and/or updates on various subjects. There is no way a centralized end-to-end service is going to eclipse email for me, unless they radically change their business models. The value proposition is just really bad in all the services I've seen so far. "Oh, you want me to sign up for your servi…

I actually figured out a domain for this idea before I gave up. The problem is I can't figure out how it scales correctly. It ideally would A) have strong network effects B) you would get contact data through your interfaces of choice (iphone, email address book, gmail, android, etc) and would rarely if ever interact with a web gui for the service. It should also have a circles concept so that I can give different pe…

You need to find a set of people who are connected and connectors, and who have this kind of problem in spades. Then build in sufficient virality so they all start using it, and as you point out, multi-platform presence. Many folks have tried to replace the business card and failed, but I've seen cards with custom URLs rather than contact details on them; maybe that's one way to go. (QR codes require too much friction.)

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#85

Post by walterbell »

inopinatus wrote: post #72
walterbell wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be useful to draw a dependency graph of IETF and W3C protocols that characterizes each one on their degree of divergence from classical IETF values. Identify the point(s) in time where history took a wrong turn, revert to that point, fork and start over with new protocols. It can't be any less disruptive than new protocols which have a non-classical values. Are there modern use cases for NNTP? Could UUCP be…

Yes - I have used NNTP as an eventually-reliable pub/sub message bus in an unstable mesh environment. The specific use being transport of per-device usage/billing & monitoring data. The implied Gossip algorithm of the server-to-server subprotocol was well suited to the intermittent availability of links in that particular network. Messages (articles) were PGP verified. NNTP is channelized by design, and servers like…

Thanks for that encouraging data point.

We need a neutral, replicable client-side data store with standardized interfaces for automated analysis/filtering/reading. This could be an offline archive of docs, web browser history or online/cloud bookmarks, along with _private_ annotations about content and authors (e.g. killfiles, quality ratings).

If the datastore is open (standard & source), there could be healthy competition among proprietary apps to use the datastore, but not control it. NNTP could predictively replicate (via home wifi) a subset of this cache to mobile based on personal calendar, reducing public network usage.

What's good about this approach is that it would surpass the usability of mobile apps + public cloud, thanks to the private cache reducing the impact of public network latency. With neverending hijinks on net neutrality and web standards, it may be worth exploring NNTP pub/sub between home server/laptop and mobile devices.

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#86

Post by zmmmmm »

Aqueous wrote: post #11
3pt14159 wrote: post #8

Email will always be around, but I must say that "Email killers" are really going to be successful. For example, I don't remember the last time my team sent an internal email that wasn't a forward from a client. We use Slack. Exclusively. We organize projects around it, sales efforts, everything. It has the async nature of email, the separation of topics like email, and the search power of email. It also means that n…

Unfortunately, the "nobody owns" feature of EMail is something Slack lacks and probably always will. Email is a federated, decentralized protocol of distributed mail servers that anybody can set up. Any email server can participate with any other email server. That's something that Slack will never have (it does interface with XMPP and IRC, but the service itself is centralized.) It is hard to overstate how critical…

> XMPP, IRC

I actually think these guys are interesting exceptions. Yes, they are still around, but they've largely been eclipsed by proprietary solutions. Why? Why did Twitter storm to success XMPP was ostensibly the same thing but with all of these good qualities (open, federated, decentralised, etc.). Still to this day messaging is a battleground for new entrants touting completely opaque solutions. It seems like there's something more to success than just being open, federated and decentralised.

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#87

Post by walterbell »

verisimilidude wrote: post #71
soneca wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't reply on your last comment, so it will be here. How would be your "9 or 10 cards"? I imagine you can just control what info a conctact would have access. Maybe: professional email, personal email, office phone, personal phone, where do you work. Maybe one profile for each info..but that is 5... how to reach 9 or 10? I think of a relationship regulated by tags. Tags similar to Google+ Circles. You can use t…

I could imagine setting up the following cards right away. And by "card", I'm not specifically referring to a piece of paper, but perhaps some kind of contact-info-related digital object. * BFFs * Recent acquaintances * Close family (reasonable people) * Extended family (think annoying newsletter emails) * Co-workers (cell number included) * Clients (cell number definitely not included) * Spammy business contacts (ve…

See Boston Review (Mar 2014) editorial on pseudonyms, with responses by Frank Pasquale, Bruce Schneier, Richard Stallman, Evgeny Morozov & others, http://bostonreview.net/forum/reed-hundt-saving-privacy

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#88

Post by oafitupa »

Bitcoin is better IMO.

But I agree that email is a great thing. I hope someone creates a sick email client that turns back the flow from Facebook to the email. I'm fine with Thunderbird + Enigmail, but I don't see the average person using it any time soon (or ever if unchanged).

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#89

Post by soneca »

verisimilidude wrote: post #44
jabelk wrote: post #15

Wholeheartedly agree with the article. I have absolute control of my inbox with filters, labels, and signing up for newsletters and/or updates on various subjects. There is no way a centralized end-to-end service is going to eclipse email for me, unless they radically change their business models. The value proposition is just really bad in all the services I've seen so far. "Oh, you want me to sign up for your servi…

I recently gave serious thought to building something similar to a rolodex social network, but eventually poked too many holes in it to follow through. I'd just come back from a conference at which I'd been asked for business cards by lots of people, maybe a hundred. Of all those people, I only really cared to hear back from a few. Though it's nice to have my name out there and be cordial in the industry, I wanted to…

Well, based on the thread I created a quick mockup of the app I envisioned: http://invis.io/9K181IPES

If anyone cares to contribute (or develop), feel free.

Re: Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

#90

Post by marcosdumay »

nchuhoai wrote: post #77

This brings up a point I think about a lot: Is email our last success in popularizing an open and federated standard? Maybe you can count OAuth, but IMO i have low confidence that we'll in the near future be able to collaborate on an open protocol so that many benefits of email such as control without vendor lock-in can be enjoyed. We have too many entrenched interests by the main players. I have been working briefly…

> Is email our last success in popularizing an open and federated standard?

Isn't the Web younger?

Post reply on HN