I personally like email because I don't usually have to deal with the worst of it, but the argument that it's useful because we all use it seems... incomplete. We all have addresses, should we be sending more mail? We all have pens, should we switch to longhand? Email is good for some stuff but not other stuff, no need to oversell it as a platform it was never meant to be and never will be.
My main business is sending news in a variety of programming niches on a weekly basis via e-mail to over 170k subscribers.. and it's a successful and growing business (at least by historical standards, though not VC/SV ones - six figure net profits). I would agree with most of what it said in this post.
This article reminds me of why I find the buzzword usage of "social" so irritating. The web has always been social! My most memorable and rewarding experiences on the internet will always be in the e-mail conversations I've shared with others around the world.
Email sucked for a decade because spam got out of control. I ran a hand-built email server in my home for years, and know this problem decently well. However, with the ability to train their filters based on SO MANY people, Google fixed it. (Other systems vastly improved as well.) With the signal-to-noise ratio being largely a solved problem these days, it makes email a viable "platform" again.
I've been using email as an application platform for years, and I agree with everything this author is saying.<p>I wish, however, that he hadn't written this article for two reasons.
1) Email suffers from the tragedy of the commons. The more email that is sent the less valuable each email app is.
2) Current email tools are woefully inadequate to deal with the existing volume of email users receive. Worst is the fact that email forces users into a LIFO queue and doesn't allow for import-based ordering. We need innovation in email processing more than we need more email based applications. (Even SMS has a better model for organizing data than modern email: one thread per counter party group.)
I think 8:30am is a bit late to send the news. I think a lot of people who work "traditional" hours are already up, out the door, and have made a dent in their day. I like to read the news before I get started.
One of my side project is trying to make email as a web portal, that is, letting people do as many things as possible in email -- <a href="http://snipek.com" rel="nofollow">http://snipek.com</a>. Well, I dogfood this project a lot in my daily life :)<p>1) Readability inside email (<a href="http://snipek.com/read" rel="nofollow">http://snipek.com/read</a>). Send a url to read@snipek.com and you'll get a reply with readable content of the web page. And it becomes a way to navigate through links in email. You send a link to read@snipek.com, then you'll get the content of the web page in email, without leaving mail client to browser.<p>2) Read news (<a href="http://snipek.com/news/" rel="nofollow">http://snipek.com/news/</a>)<p>3) Create web page for your email messages, so you can share the web page on social network (<a href="http://snipek.com/web" rel="nofollow">http://snipek.com/web</a>) -- forward any message to web@snipek.com
I like getting news in my email; when Google Reader died I switched my RSS over to mail and haven't missed a beat.<p>One thing I would like, though, is a link batcher - whether I'm on the train or just busy I often see something I want to read later, and I use Pinboard to save it like that (and I've used Pocket and Instapaper before), but the backlog just builds up into a bottomless hole. It'd be great to get an email the next day saying "here's your queue" so I can do a second round of pruning.
I've been using Circa for the past few months (maybe even up to a year?), and I much prefer it to email.<p>I've come to associate email with either personal correspondence, technical support, or spam.<p>The thing about a website or an app is that it's segmented. I have to actively decide, "Now's the time for this activity" instead of an email deciding for me.<p>Also, I didn't know theSkimm was a young-women's thing. My girlfriend (a young woman) gets it, but I didn't think it was specifically "for" her.
> <i>1.) Email is the world’s largest platform.</i><p>> <i>2.) Engagement in email far outshines apps.</i><p>> <i>3.) Everyone else is too jaded to take advantage of it.</i><p>This is no doubt the same rationale for Square Cash[1] i.e. send cash to your friends via email. I wonder how their adoption has been though, compared to an analog product like Venmo[2] which uses a mobile app approach.<p>[1] <a href="https://square.com/cash" rel="nofollow">https://square.com/cash</a><p>[2] <a href="https://venmo.com/" rel="nofollow">https://venmo.com/</a>
IMO, I don’t think the platform is the key in this kind of business. As you can see in this thread some people like emails and other people like apps or whatever.<p>I think the key is the quality of content. When I read this:
The Ivy experience
We select from a variety of topics and sources to help you become well informed. Join thousands of Ivy League students in reading bit•of•news.<p>I think , “who are “we”?”, “who are choosing instead of me the news?”, “you” select a variety of topics that maybe I (as a user) don’t even care… which makes users get bored or jaded… and opt-out of it.<p>I have just subscribed and I haven’t been asked if I am interested in sport, tech, politics, science, biology,fashion,travel,business… and if I start receiving that kind of topics that I don’t like or think are not interesting but the person in charge thinks they are cool… there is a problem…<p>The quality content is different for almost each user. For example, Flipboard asks you before you open an account to know what you want to be informed. They have quality content for each user.
I run a similar service over at The Daily Water Cooler <a href="http://www.the-dwc.co/" rel="nofollow">http://www.the-dwc.co/</a> so I definitely agree with your line of thinking regarding email as one of the most easily accessible platforms.<p>My service might be closer to Dave Pell's NextDraft or a more general Term Sheet by Dan Primack though because it's really just me curating the content so I generally add more personal flavor and don't really have an algorithm to help source the content.<p>Kind of curious where TheSkimm goes though. They got some nice funding recently from Homebrew but clearly are aiming to be more than just a newsletter. They also used to be more young professional woman-centric, but have started to slowly downplay that.<p>I gotta wonder though, why the Ivy League focus?<p>Anyway, good luck with the venture! Happy to see more people informed about the news.
A lot of psudeo arguments against this in this thread. I don't think there is any problem with using the "platform" in this way its pretty much a newsletter or a mailing list which is very standard.<p>I'm interested in seeing what you can really do with email looking at it as a platform with 2.0 eyes in mind.<p>One other thing. I think call intent will be what sets you apart and if that's the case why does the platform matter, why can't you have email, RSS, and a web app?<p>I get you want to focus on doing something new with something old. That's cool. Just dont cut potential power readers off because you use the wrong platform. Be email first RSS second if it helps you think about it. (No reason you can't pivot other platforms later)
Reminds me of <a href="http://evening-edition.com/" rel="nofollow">http://evening-edition.com/</a><p>They had news for a few different time-zones and it was amazing, but I don't think they got enough funding to keep it going, they stopped at the end of 2013.
Have you seen <a href="http://nuzzel.com/" rel="nofollow">http://nuzzel.com/</a> ? It's another one that sends links out with daily updates.
Is it really that strange an idea to build a startup focused on email? Sendgrid, mailchimp etc seem to do fine. Not to mention the various tools and services for email migration, backup, hosting etc.<p>If anything email seems like a much safer bet than building something for twitter, considering the number of businesses that rely on it and the fact that you're less likely to be screwed over by some policy decision.
Jason Calacanis has his Launch Ticker (<a href="http://launch.co/" rel="nofollow">http://launch.co/</a>) that sends a couple emails per day with summaries of the day's top tech news. It's now a subscription only service, but it definitely cuts the time I spend looking for Tech News.<p>Not 100% sure, but I think he's launching Inside.com that may have a similar take...
I could say the same about snail mail to a degree.<p>Plenty of start-ups have talked about how their thank you cards were "revolutionary." NextDoor is using postcards to validate addresses and for some good old fashioned marketing. Where else can we go back in time??? =)
I like the idea. I received the first mail today. News about negative happenings over the world. What I personally would like is <i>positive</i> news delivered to my inbox. For negative news I can watch CNN, Fox and whatnot.
I've subscribed to designboom for email
<a href="http://www.designboom.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.designboom.com/</a><p>Kinda wish hackaday had one. Btw what's with the countdown?
Hi Xiao, how you doin'? Still using PyTeaser?<p>Got a question though. How do you determine the news to send? Do you check read it all or you have an automated system in place for it?
subscribed! I think its a good idea. Its like in the old days when my dad looks at the newspaper everyday. Instead i don't look at the newspapers, i read emails.
This reminds me of a service that I used in the past, called Evening Edition (<a href="http://evening-edition.com/" rel="nofollow">http://evening-edition.com/</a>). Thank you for bringing back a service where I can receive a daily digest of today's news. Combined with SaneBox or Unroll.me, your daily email helps to raise the value of the few e-mails that make it to my inbox.
That's what elite marketers have been telling us for years. The problem is many people are attracted to bells and whistles that is without substance. In the end it's all about the content of the message; the messenger would soon be forgotten (or be a lot less relevant, at least).