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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”

#81

Post by adventured »

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've got 13 years of emails in my personal gmail account, keeping track of everything from bill payments & receipts to valuable conversations. How does WeChat satisfy something very long-term like that? I don't see how any of the existing, popular messaging platforms can replace the fixed, archival value of email.

The majority of Internet users in the US - nearly 80% of US adults have a smartphone - are mobile savvy and were that way before the Chinese majority got there. Being mobile savvy has nothing to do with it.

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

#82

Post by cbhl »

alexmat wrote: post #70
gramakri wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

The big companies gave up on it. Google, Facebook, etc.

Everyone wants their product to be the new hotness. See the copying of stickers, voice messages, and payments from Chinese/Japanese messaging products. Or how Skype became a Snapchat clone.

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

#83

Post by [deleted] »

huhweirdyhat wrote: post #69
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 likel…

[deleted]

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

#84

Post by hiisukun »

I enjoy email, but get frustrated when conversations get long. Here is my favourite quote about email, which explains the issue lovingly:

  -- 
  A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. 
  Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? 
  A: Top-posting. 
  Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in email?

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

#86

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

JetSpiegel wrote: post #6
RandomInteger4 wrote: post #4

This is tangential, but needs to be stated: What I've learned from email newletters is that Microsoft Outlook needs to die a swift and horrible death. There is absolutely no good reason why we should have to create email newsletters that require tables for layout.

That and HTML email that doesn't have a text/plain alternative. Even the braindead conversion contain some nuggets of information.

Using lynx with `-stdin -dump` works pretty well in mutt

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

#87

Post by falcolas »

cbhl wrote: post #82
alexmat wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The big companies gave up on it. Google, Facebook, etc. Everyone wants their product to be the new hotness. See the copying of stickers, voice messages, and payments from Chinese/Japanese messaging products. Or how Skype became a Snapchat clone.

Companies giving up on open standards in favor of their own walled gardens does not really provide a meaningful commentary on the open standards themselves.

XMPP itself is a bit of a mess, but it's a standard with a lot of adoption, which has its own value.

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

#88

Post by _tulpa »

alexmat wrote: post #70
gramakri wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I used to use third party desktop & mobile chat clients for facebook and hangouts, both via XMPP. Then I guess they realized how much user data they were missing out on by not excluding third-party apps and dropped support.

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

#89

Post by ams6110 »

ergothus wrote: post #47
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.

This is part of why I send email in plain text. HTML is probably not going away any time soon, but plain text has been around several decades longer at least.

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

#90

Post by bobbles »

hiisukun wrote: post #84

I enjoy email, but get frustrated when conversations get long. Here is my favourite quote about email, which explains the issue lovingly: -- A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in email?

Run into this sort of problem all the time using Jira service desk, internal view of a ticket is new comments add to the bottom, customer view of the same ticket is that comments add to the top.

Results in everyone using 'please see below' or 'above' and everyone being confused

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