
Ask HN: What's Next After “Email” - stazz1
Yeah e-mail makes sense as some sort of digital folder that tracks messages, but what&#x27;s the next step?
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sethammons
While I have a vested interest in email[0], all the data suggests it is going
strong and will continue to do so. Marketers get better ROI on campaigns over
email[1]. Email is used by around 90% of people in the US[2]. SMTP is still
protocol available to all and helps prevent walled gardens. Email provides a
snapshot of a conversation and lends itself towards archival. Any formal
business comms are over email, and I don't see Slack et al replacing that. I
think informal comms are switching more away from email though, which is a
niche that chat does well with.

I don't see a chat program ever replacing email however. Instead, I see deeper
integrations. Email, chat, sms, all working together. I think, eventually, all
wanted communications will reach the right people over their preferred
channels with data retrievable from any of the channels. Hopefully this can be
done with open standards.

0: I work with Twilio SendGrid and am a principal engineer on the MTA team

1: [https://litmus.com/blog/the-roi-for-email-marketing-the-
good...](https://litmus.com/blog/the-roi-for-email-marketing-the-good-news-
and-the-bad-news)

2: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/271501/us-email-usage-
re...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/271501/us-email-usage-reach-by-
age/)

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Trias11
Good chat platform. We can call it differently but essence is the same: async
communication.

Pretty much everything email has modern chat can have too.

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gshdg
People have been asking this for the last 30 years. What makes you think we’re
ready for a next step or that it isn’t already here?

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stazz1
Tech landscape has put a screen in every hand, net could become decentralized
with the correct hardware, email does not have built-in spam prevention like
coin, many factors encourage the idea that e-mail has a supercessor lurking
undiscovered or unimplemented. So I'm wondering what it looks like, or what
its features would be, or how we would build e-mail if we were tasked with it
today a'fresh.

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twoflower9
telekinesis

~~~
stazz1
I wish ! Oh my gosh incorrigible. Well I was thinking more like what's the
future of messaging / to-do-lists look like?

