How Big is Email? • Hacker News Board

Re: How Big is Email?

#21

Post by raindrift » Sat, Oct 18, 2014, 6:49 PM UTC

vacri wrote: post #8

chris_va wrote: post #4

I 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…

I based my estimates on the best numbers I could find. That said, my spam numbers were in fact incorrect (spam is small and gets deleted). Accounting for that, people save an average of a year's worth of email.

If you look at the growth in email users over time (~6%/year), most accounts are probably > 1 year old. I'd assume the disparity comes from people deleting messages.

Re: How Big is Email?

#22

Post by fyfer » Sat, Oct 18, 2014, 8:40 PM UTC

csharpminor wrote: post #3

Enjoyed 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?

I've been using threadable for a while. In how I interact with it, it's a smarter alternative to a Mailman list and/or a more usable and comprehensive alternative to Google Groups (not a plugin). It's basically a standalone email service, and the members of a threadable group have two options: threadable can be a totally invisible layer and the email shows up in their standard inbox as usual. Or they can use the threadable interface, which is a lovely and simple way to see all the threads your group is discussing, split off new topics, create subgroups, and so on. It has many uses for project management, but I haven't interacted with that side of it as much. Perhaps others can comment on that aspect.

Re: How Big is Email?

#23

Post by neilk » Sat, Oct 18, 2014, 9:14 PM UTC

csharpminor wrote: post #3

Enjoyed 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?

Well, you know this pattern...

1) people have discussions on a mailing list, and someone has an idea to do something

2) Then you recreate all that information on some project management tool, and tell the participants to subscribe to updates there.

3) the project management tool makes it searchable, taggable, tracks progress, and others don't have to be spammed with your updates. And it probably sends out email every time something changes.

Threadable is like that except there's no step 2.

It's sort of a mailing list manager that can do a lot of tricks with threads and tagging them. You can see all your threads and tasks on the web, or keep on using it via email.