5. The more things change...
the more they stay the same.
• Nostrong innovation in email, while the web/mobile has
flourished. Why?
• Major players have (inadvertently) chilled innovation
• Spam (90-95%) and storage: big barriers to entry
• RFC822, 2822, 3501, etc: young, innovative developers don’t
much care for these ancient standards
• Complex state machines vs. stateless transactions
12. GRAND CENTRAL STATION
• “Email is the grand central station of knowledge work.”
• Ohyeah: we also use it for personal & business
communications!
• Obligation Management
15. “CRAP. I OWE HIM A REPLY!”
Email is where we manage our obligations.
(Really badly!)
16. DESIGN CONSTRAINTS
• Newproducts are a result of specific design
constraints
• Withinthe world of email, the only true design constraint is
interoperability: RFC2822 and friends
• What else might be possible?
28. GOOGLE WAVE
• “What email would have been if it had been invented today.”
• “We may have overstressed that idea.”
• “We forgot one thing: to make it work with email.”
• Based on XMPP; how very different is that from SMTP?
29. THE PROBLEMS
overload corrosive
For many, email is making things worse, not better.
30. HOW PEOPLE USE EMAIL
• MYTH: people want one email identity
• FACT: on average, people have six!
• FACT: Namespace is more important than features!
• Ben Gross (presenter, Inbox Love, November 2010)
• http://bengross.com/publications/
33. BLAH, BLAH, BLAH.
THE FOREGOING DOCUMENTS
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all copies. Thank you.
34. NEW DESIGN
CONSTRAINTS?
GOALS
Ease overload.
Improve relationships.
Put (small) cost on sender.
Orient around people
instead of messages.
Standards compliant.
Minimize new constraints.
37. SHORTMAIL IS OUR
CONTRIBUTION
• We hope it will improve relationships
• We hope it will improve response time
• We hope it will reduce cognitive load
• We hope it will put a reasonable cost on senders
hope it will spur innovation in the stagnant
• We
world of email
41. “But the real key to this
Gmail Lite that I envision
would be a restriction.
Message length.”
– MG Siegler, TechCrunch
November 27, 2010
42. Chris Anderson @ TED
“The total time taken to
respond to an email is often
MORE than the time it took to
create it.”
Shortmail enforces
an email charter.
43. IMPACT OF
TOUCH,
MOBILE.
People want shorter, more
concise communication!
44. MYTH: They don’t use email.
FACT: They don’t like email.
Too formal, too much signaling overhead.
Maybe ADULTS write too damn much!
48. Shortmail is standards-compliant.
IMAP/POP for compatibility with millions of
mobile devices. (whence FB IMAP?)
SMTP for interoperability with every existing
email address.
But mostly, we want Shortmail to make you
happy.
A true public identity?
Future? Open social network built on email?
50. HELP US Dave Troy
Chief Executive Officer
MAKE EMAIL davetroy@shortmail.com
@davetroy
BETTER. facebook.com/davetroy
Get your account at
shortmail.com!