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Inside continues to bet on email, the “largest social network”

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Re: Inside continues to bet on email, the “largest social network”

#41

Post by ringaroundthetx »

azurezyq wrote: post #33

Maybe in US this holds, but things may be different in different places. I'm a Chinese living in the bay area. I think people here treat E-mails as part of their daily life probably because most of them began to use it before the mobile internet is a thing. On the contrary, in China where the majority internet users are mobile-savvy, WeChat is the new email. Actually E-mails are only for official communications there…

General rule of thumb for the US, the worst form of printed communication is typically the more official business savvy one.

Probably some correlation to your observations.

Re: Inside continues to bet on email, the “largest social network”

#42

Post by paxy »

Spivak wrote: post #37
paxy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to send plain text, yes. There is a lot of variation among clients when it comes to formatting and layout however. But then by those constraints you can also count HTTP or SSH or Telnet or any other protocol at that layer.

Nobody outside of business and advertising cares how annoying it is to write carefully formatted HTML emails. For any end user, email is the universal communication mechanism.

For text based communication SMS absolutely dwarfs email.

Re: Inside continues to bet on email, the “largest social network”

#43

Post by ringaroundthetx »

UnpossibleJim wrote: post #17
aidenn0 wrote: post #12

e-mail seems to be dying fast. I have several friends (all under 30) who are only reachable via facebook or SMS; e-mail is an afterthought.

Even in a professional setting?

If you are doing unskilled labor, you know the kind eligible for overtime at all, you or your employees are text message and Facebook. And the Facebook part is a big maybe if they are also under 30 and not that impressionable.

Oh that have an address or two. Apple gave them one. A utility company gave them one. But its an afterthought

Re: Inside continues to bet on email, the “largest social network”

#44

Post by brongondwana »

The most important thing about email is that you get your own, immutable copy of every message. You can keep your copy and know that it will be exactly the same when you look at it next week, it won't have been silently (or even not silently) "corrected".

It's both a blessing and a curse, as anybody who's accidentally emailed the wrong people or hit send before finishing editing knows, but it's the most powerful thing about email (and SMS or even fax for that matter!) - you get your own copy.

Re: Inside continues to bet on email, the “largest social network”

#45

Post by jasonmcalacanis »

bkanber wrote: post #40

I was intrigued, so I just looked at the "Inside Premium" plan -- $10/mo for one newsletter?? You can get a digital subscription to Washington Post and NYT for basically half that!

NYT and Netflix are an exceptional value at $10 a month, but those are large scale consumer content. In the B2B content space, any content that saves folks a couple of hours a week is worth a LOT of money.

in this case, $10-25 a month is nothing... really, it's like zero dollars in the context of a business executive making six figures.

Re: Inside continues to bet on email, the “largest social network”

#46

Post by jimktrains2 »

TomMarius wrote: post #25
jimktrains2 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also XMPP, but that's not gained a lot of traction. IRC also doesn't seem primed to burst back onto the scene. (To be honest, the only thing I really like about slack over IRC is history. I wonder if that couldn't be processed in a more peer-to-peer manner over IRC?)

You can run a ZNC bouncer for a quarter of the price of one Slack account.

I still lose history if my bouncer goes offline.

Re: Inside continues to bet on email, the “largest social network”

#47

Post by ergothus »

brongondwana wrote: post #44

The most important thing about email is that you get your own, immutable copy of every message. You can keep your copy and know that it will be exactly the same when you look at it next week, it won't have been silently (or even not silently) "corrected". It's both a blessing and a curse, as anybody who's accidentally emailed the wrong people or hit send before finishing editing knows, but it's the most powerful thin…

You can also assume that copy will remain readable - standards and multiple vendors matter.

I have no huge issue with moving to a more IM-based interaction as my default, but I've yet to find one that is actually compatible with them all. I need 3-5 apps to communicate to everyone right now, and in a few years some of those will be gone and new ones will be added.

Re: Inside continues to bet on email, the “largest social network”

#49

Post by majormajor »

azurezyq wrote: post #33

Maybe in US this holds, but things may be different in different places. I'm a Chinese living in the bay area. I think people here treat E-mails as part of their daily life probably because most of them began to use it before the mobile internet is a thing. On the contrary, in China where the majority internet users are mobile-savvy, WeChat is the new email. Actually E-mails are only for official communications there…

Yeah, there's a big list of global differences around "what technology was around when these systems started getting built." Results in a weird mix of things looking both more and less futuristic than wherever home is in certain places; for me this was most striking when visiting Japan a while back and seeing how automated with vending machines and such a lot of ramen shops were compared to the US, but at the same time how cash-based they still were - the vending machines were very clearly very mechanical, not networked or "smart" machines, that just processed paper money and nothing else.

Re: Inside continues to bet on email, the “largest social network”

#50

Post by AznHisoka »

Spivak wrote: post #37
paxy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to send plain text, yes. There is a lot of variation among clients when it comes to formatting and layout however. But then by those constraints you can also count HTTP or SSH or Telnet or any other protocol at that layer.

Nobody outside of business and advertising cares how annoying it is to write carefully formatted HTML emails. For any end user, email is the universal communication mechanism.

Also very few people care how well formatted your html emails are. Give me plaintext anyday.
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