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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”

#61

Post by r00fus »

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…

I think it's a bit reductionist to say "X is the new ". Especially when X is proprietary.

Email is a standard. There are multiple providers. It's a great lowest-common-denominator.

Does any company really want a part of that without changing the above? I thought Uber establishing a "defacto standard" for ride-sharing which can be copied by competitors is one of the strategy points we criticize here on HN?

I don't know the Chinese market, but just keep in mind at some point everyone thought that FB/Twitter were going to kill RSS. Fact is, RSS is still around and being used a lot (Podcasts?). While FB/Twitter have restricted access to monetize (or prevent others monetizing) their proprietary platform.

Email will be still around when WeChat is dead and gone.

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

#62

Post by maxxxxx »

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…

I often look up E-mails from 5-10 years ago to find some piece of obscure information. It's a really nice archive for exchange of thoughts. I don't think my Slack or Facebook messages will stay around for that long.

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

#63

Post by joshmarinacci »

duck wrote: post #16

A shameless plug, but if you like HN and email, my side-project, http://www.hackernewsletter.com/ , might be worth a look. Rolling past 50k subscribers this month.

Ah. I think you are the reason my blog was slammed all of a sudden a few days after I hit the front page.

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

#64

Post by emilyfm »

pmlnr wrote: post #53
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…

That is only one important aspect. It's also provider-independent (as long as you own the domain, that is true) and is, by nature, decentralised. (Like really decentralised, even by redundancy provaded by MX record priority in DNS.)

Unfortunately very few people have their own domain for email (although they should!).

When companies have kindly sent me their entire customer list (by using CC in place of BCC) I see there are very few domains in it outside of the major free email providers, and those that remain are mostly for their work or small business. A personal or family domain is very rare.

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

#65

Post by killerdhmo »

paxy wrote: post #39
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…

Same with India and WhatsApp

Case in point why email will live forever.

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

#68

Post by gramakri »

pmlnr wrote: post #52

"[...] People seem to hate email for the same reasons they once loved it. Email's underlying triumph, the quality that made it revolutionary, was that you could instantly deliver a written message to someone even if they weren't there to receive it. [...] Email is neutral, meaning that anyone can email anyone else with an email address. If you have a person's email address, your message will be delivered no matter wh…

> Email is a set of protocol and thus it _will_ outlive any centalised, closed, walled garden.

What stops email going the way of XMPP?

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

#69

Post by huhweirdyhat »

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…

When you lease an apartment, do you get the details via WhatsApp/WeChat/TodaysChatApp or email? How about receipts, bank statements, anything where deliverability actually matters?

Email is infrastructure; people invest in it. If the only people investing in these chat apps are themselves people, these apps could be ghost towns in years.

In some sense you're right; in another sense, it still seems like email is likely to outlive walled gardens because there's no long-term reason to use them.

In particular, unless there's a decent way to ensure that nobody can take my received messages away from me, i'm unlikely to adopt it for anything but chatting with friends.

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

#70

Post by alexmat »

gramakri wrote: post #68
pmlnr wrote: post #52

"[...] People seem to hate email for the same reasons they once loved it. Email's underlying triumph, the quality that made it revolutionary, was that you could instantly deliver a written message to someone even if they weren't there to receive it. [...] Email is neutral, meaning that anyone can email anyone else with an email address. If you have a person's email address, your message will be delivered no matter wh…

> Email is a set of protocol and thus it _will_ outlive any centalised, closed, walled garden. What stops email going the way of XMPP?

What happened to XMPP? Not trying to be snarky, I still use it. Is there an issue I should be aware of?
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