How Big is Email?
medium.com
How Big is Email?
1–10 of 23 posts
Re: How Big is Email?
#2Having someones email is like you being logged into their social network instead of them having to log into yours. You need to handle this relationship carefully.
I am 40 and for that reason I am biased with regards to email as I grew up with it. Having said that. I can't find a much better tool than email to build a social project around.
When I started weekendhacker.net I got 3000 signups in a week. First 10 newsletters with around 100 projects I hand wrote but it allowed me to try out and see if there was something of value without spending too much on servers etc (WH is non-profit).
Now I am at 8000 members and with 500 projects under the wing. I have more automation now but it's still centered around the newsletter and it still feels like a community.
Starting a business around emails is the quickest and most telling way of starting a business next to people actually paying you.
Re: How Big is Email?
#3Enjoyed the read! I'm feeling kind of dumb asking this, but what exactly is Threadable? Is it a standalone email service or a plugin for Gmail? Is it supposed to replace a project management tool like Asana/Basecamp/Trello/etc. or is it a supplement that integrates with them?
Re: How Big is Email?
#4I feel compelled to point out that almost all of those numbers are completely incorrect overestimates.
Re: How Big is Email?
#5I feel compelled to point out that almost all of those numbers are completely incorrect overestimates.
the SPAM percentage does seem overly optimistic...
Re: How Big is Email?
#6If spam filtering has become so effective (which seems true), why do people keep sending so much of it?
Re: How Big is Email?
#7This is one of the key reasons we built Inbox, which is a new platform for building apps on top of the massive email system.
The folks from Threadable are working on great stuff too, and a good example of how you can build a new experience leveraging an existing system.
Re: How Big is Email?
#8I feel compelled to point out that almost all of those numbers are completely incorrect overestimates.
There’s 2.3 billion email users worldwide, and the average mailbox stores 8,024 messages.
versus
150 billion emails each day
These numbers do indeed fail the sniff test. This would mean that the average age of a mailbox would only be ~120 days (150B/2.3B daily mails/user = ~65, 8000/65 user account size/dail user mails= ~120 days). That's a mere four months. Of course, this is only if people aren't regularly deleting mail, but it gives an idea of how far out of whack the estimates are.
Later on, it's mentioned that 70% of mail is spam. Going from that same 150B number, that would mean that the average user would get ~20 emails per day that weren't spam. This is the average user, whose mailbox is only 4 months old, and probably hasn't signed up to all that many services...
Re: How Big is Email?
#9If spam filtering has become so effective (which seems true), why do people keep sending so much of it?
The economics still work out, unfortunately. It's really, really cheap to send spam, so it only takes a small fraction of a percent of people who click for it to work out.
Also, not everyone has the same level of spam filtering as you might be experiencing. Imagine an elderly couple who still pays for AOL, etc. I have been seeing a lot of spam recently about "medicare open enrollment starts soon".
Re: How Big is Email?
#10This is one of the key reasons we built Inbox, which is a new platform for building apps on top of the massive email system. https://www.inboxapp.com/ The folks from Threadable are working on great stuff too, and a good example of how you can build a new experience leveraging an existing system.
I'm a bit confused about Inbox. Is it a SaaS or installed program?