
Email, an idea so old that it's new - xux
http://blog.bitofnews.com/email-an-idea-so-old-that-its-new/
======
devindotcom
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.

~~~
xux
Good thoughts and I agree! The overloading of email is a huge problem, and no
one wants more junk. So it comes down to receiving things that you really
want.

With Bit of News, it's easy to unsubscribe with one click. If people didn't
want it, they would have unsubscribed. At least that's what I would do.

I've found that people tend to like emails that they expect, and dislike the
ones that are out of the blue. If you expect it everyday, it's a pleasure
instead of an annoyance.

~~~
timrosenblatt
"it's easy to unsubscribe with one click. If people didn't want it, they would
have unsubscribed"

Be careful with this assumption. It might surprise you how many people won't
bother to click unsubscribe (no matter how obvious you make the option) b/c
they just click "spam". I have friends who have been caught by this one in the
past.

~~~
derefr
Wouldn't it be nice if mail programs followed any rel='unsubscribe' link found
in a message, whenever the message was marked as spam?

~~~
icebraining
No, because it would help spammers identify valid addresses.

~~~
derefr
This is the argument I see everyone using, but I don't understand it. Why does
it matter if a spammer knows your address is valid, if they've already decided
it's valid enough to spam it? Do you think spammers really bother to validate
their address-lists before reselling them to other spammers? (Even if they do,
though, I think it'd be irrelevant. If your spam filter is effective, it
doesn't matter how much "true spam"\--things you have absolutely no chance of
finding interesting--you get. It all gets filtered away before you see it.)

Think about it this way: if there was an auto-unsubscribe mechanism, which
ethical bulk email senders honored and spammers didn't, then it would become
much _easier_ to filter spam: any message that clusters into a message-cluster
that the system has sent out an unsubscribe-request for already, is junk.

~~~
jacktoole1
Maybe more importantly, they would know whether their message was classified
as spam (or a pretty good heuristic thereof). A naive bayes classifier for
spam relies on the spammer not knowing whether the message was marked as spam
or not. Such a classifier isn't difficult to fool _if_ you can test how a
given message is classified. (Presumably gmail's spam filter is more advanced
these days, but the idea that it is easier to fool if you can tell the result
still seems reasonable.)

~~~
derefr
Here's an alternative idea: what if clients would only honor rel='unsubscribe'
links with an HTTPS URL scheme, and only finish the TLS handshake for those
requests if the host sends the client a valid Extended-Validation certificate?

Every spammer who wanted to "trick" the auto-unsub mechanism would basically
have to first dox themselves for all the world to see. And any certificate
that turned out to not be a valid means of contacting the spammer would be
quickly revoked.

------
petercooper
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.

~~~
keithpeter
Niches. I'd pay a small monthly fee to have news relevant to my niche clipped,
summarised and sent to me.

~~~
xux
What niche, if you don't mind sharing?

~~~
keithpeter
UK education.

------
flycaliguy
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.

~~~
xux
Totally agree! There are some experiences I'd personally experience alone.
That's why I chose against making Bit of News social.

Reading is, and has always been, an individual activity. Just you and the
words. The rise of social media just cluttered our attention span, sharing
this and sharing that. Reading is enjoyable when you're completely focused!

~~~
Curmudgel
>Reading is, and has always been, an individual activity.

That's not true. Novels written in the 19th and 18th century, which featured
long and complex passages, were often read aloud. Poems with meter are usually
read aloud as well. Religious prayers are still sung and chanted.

>The rise of social media just cluttered our attention span

A generation ago, people said the same thing about a kind of social media:
television. The generation before that worried about movies, as well as the
decline of letter writing because of spread of telephones. The generation
before that was worried about the telegraph destroying the art of letter
writing as well.

Movies, telephones, television, and texting do not have permanent deleterious
effects on your attention span. All you need to do is make a commitment and
set aside time for reading.

~~~
lazylizard
yes. actually,its older than 18/19th century. check out chaucer, for example.

------
TheRealDunkirk
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.

------
thatthatis
I've been using email as an application platform for years, and I agree with
everything this author is saying.

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.)

~~~
e12e
> 1) Email suffers from the tragedy of the commons. The more email that is
> sent the less valuable each email app is.

I'm not sure it's so much the tragedy of the commons, as it is "any fool can
mash some text and whatever random markup he _thinks_ works down the pipe and
call it email". With proper use of headers (and x-headers) most setups can
handle mail just fine (filter on delivery with sieve or similar).

> 2) Current email tools are woefully inadequate to deal with the existing
> volume of email users receive.

I've yet to see anyone roll out proper server based filtering that truly
enables the "regular" user to do what "power users" already can do easily. I
think sieve coupled with imap and server-side search holds great promise, but
I don't know of any clients that actually make good use of this.

The alternative approach of indexing for fast search/filter on the client only
really works for a single client (eg: "hosted" mail, either webmail, only
reading email on a single computer (eg: laptop) or reading email over ssh).

I suppose we need a standard way of a) syncing email (like imap), b) syncing
filters (like sieve) and c) syncing indexes and search/view/tag preferences.
I'm not aware of anything that fills c).

> Worst is the fact that email forces users into a LIFO queue and doesn't
> allow for import-based ordering.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Are there clients that don't allow reverse
sorting by message date? That sounds like a broken client. That people don't
_use_ the feature is another matter...

> We need innovation in email processing more than we need more email based
> applications.

Looking at the design of MH [
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MH_Message_Handling_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MH_Message_Handling_System)
], and sup/notmuch -- it would seem we should've come much further than we
have. As a vim-user I quietly resent the cult of Emacs for probably having a
"good enough" email system, and therefore no longer contributing improvement
for "the rest of us" ;-)

> (Even SMS has a better model for organizing data than modern email: one
> thread per counter party group.)

Most clients allow sorting by thread (
[http://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html](http://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html)
) or grouping by participants?

Now, if you want to argue that the state of email readers on Android is
atrocious, I'll agree without further comment.

~~~
thatthatis
>> Worst is the fact that email forces users into a LIFO queue and doesn't
allow for import-based ordering.

> I'm not sure what you mean here. Are there clients that don't allow reverse
> sorting by message date? That sounds like a broken client. That people don't
> use the feature is another matter...

LIFO and FIFO are the only real sorting options. I want drag and drop of "this
is top priority, this is second, this is third" that doesn't get pushed down
when new mail comes in. Email is used as a processing queue, but at the volume
most of us receive advanced ordering is desirable but impossible -- I want to
look at my email and see the top five things I have to do then the new
messages not vice versa.

Email as a consumer is currently "OK" but I'd like to see it upgraded to
"good."

~~~
e12e
You can at least get some of that with flags/stars, but I agree, most clients
won't allow persistent sorting, and for some use-cases that could be useful.

------
crozewski
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.

~~~
xux
I actually did tons of A/B testing and 8:30am works way better than 6am (in
terms of open rates). Honestly I've no idea why, but I have a few theories.

~~~
AznHisoka
6AM? Barely anyone is awake.

~~~
xux
I used that to compare because a lot of others email out at that time: Digg,
WSJ, Quartz, etc.

------
snipek
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 --
[http://snipek.com](http://snipek.com). Well, I dogfood this project a lot in
my daily life :)

1) Readability inside email
([http://snipek.com/read](http://snipek.com/read)). 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.

2) Read news ([http://snipek.com/news/](http://snipek.com/news/))

3) Create web page for your email messages, so you can share the web page on
social network ([http://snipek.com/web](http://snipek.com/web)) -- forward any
message to web@snipek.com

~~~
snipek
From metrics, seems users use web@snipek.com more than other functions of this
project, so I just made snipek.com/web the front page (snipek.com) last night
...

------
polm23
I like getting news in my email; when Google Reader died I switched my RSS
over to mail and haven't missed a beat.

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.

------
diminoten
I've been using Circa for the past few months (maybe even up to a year?), and
I much prefer it to email.

I've come to associate email with either personal correspondence, technical
support, or spam.

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.

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.

~~~
icebraining
_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._

That's what filters and labels are for. I follow a few medium-traffic mailing
lists, but I don't let them flood my Inbox, they go straight to the label
which I can peruse later.

Nowadays even "noobs" are using them, thanks to Gmail recent tabbed interface.
We just need a new for News and this service would fit right in.

~~~
diminoten
Filters and labels do nothing for this problem at all, because the email still
either says, "I'm here, look at me" in some way, or it doesn't, and is
entirely forgotten.

The solution would be to incorporate checking the folder every time I want to
read some news, which involves _way_ more gestures/taps and intent than if I
want to read news in Circa (one tap).

~~~
icebraining
Yes, I was thinking about checking the label when you want to read the news.
I'm not criticizing your approach if it works for you, I'm just saying that
email doesn't have to be pre-emptive and force an activity upon you; you can
shape it.

 _The solution would be to incorporate checking the folder every time I want
to read some news, which involves way more gestures /taps and intent than if I
want to read news in Circa (one tap)._

Well, I guess it depends on your OS/email client. Gmail on Android has a
widget for opening a specific label directly from the home screen, so it would
be just one tap as well.

I use K-9, which I don't think has the same feature, but two taps (open
client, click on folder) is good enough for me :)

~~~
diminoten
Don't you see the kinds of gyrations and hoops you're having to jump through
just to get email to work even remotely similarly as an actual app?

Not to mention all the one-click-for-more, filter-by-category, etc. features
that come with a native app.

It just doesn't make sense.

~~~
icebraining
I'm usually more frustrated by the restrictions imposed by apps. Can't copy-
paste, can't adjust text size, can't export the list of stories read or
archive them, can't apply my own filters, can't use it on my desktop, etc.

For example, I can't use Circa, due to [1]. With email, this kind of stupid
restrictions just don't exist. Though I agree that email is not the best
platform for this activity: I prefer RSS/Atom.

[1] [http://circa.helpshift.com/a/circa-news/?s=general&f=why-
isn...](http://circa.helpshift.com/a/circa-news/?s=general&f=why-isn-t-circa-
news-for-android-available-in-the-play-store-in-my-country)

------
pshin45
> _1.) Email is the world’s largest platform._

> _2.) Engagement in email far outshines apps._

> _3.) Everyone else is too jaded to take advantage of it._

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.

[1] [https://square.com/cash](https://square.com/cash)

[2] [https://venmo.com/](https://venmo.com/)

~~~
xux
Yeah sounds like a perfect way for Square to latch onto an already-popular
platform and ride the wave.

It just makes sense. You're already emailing the other person, why not also
send money too? You're already reading your email, why not checkout today's
news?

I'm interested to see where email goes. Maybe it'll become a hub for all your
internet activities.

~~~
boomzilla
Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which
cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

\--Jamie Zawinski

------
joerich
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.

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.

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.

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…

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.

------
p_ngu
I run a similar service over at The Daily Water Cooler [http://www.the-
dwc.co/](http://www.the-dwc.co/) so I definitely agree with your line of
thinking regarding email as one of the most easily accessible platforms.

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.

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.

I gotta wonder though, why the Ivy League focus?

Anyway, good luck with the venture! Happy to see more people informed about
the news.

------
lugg
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.

I'm interested in seeing what you can really do with email looking at it as a
platform with 2.0 eyes in mind.

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?

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)

------
minikites
Reminds me of [http://evening-edition.com/](http://evening-edition.com/)

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.

~~~
crisnoble
[http://nextdraft.com/](http://nextdraft.com/) is a pretty awesome source of
news delivered by email. A good smattering of non tech articles to augment my
hn binging.

~~~
minikites
This looks neat, I'll check it out. I was really sad when Evening Edition
stopped.

------
timrosenblatt
Have you seen [http://nuzzel.com/](http://nuzzel.com/) ? It's another one that
sends links out with daily updates.

~~~
xux
Cool! This sounds like [http://www.news.me/](http://www.news.me/) before the
team bought Digg and pivoted. It seems social news via email didn't work for
them, so I'm looking forward to how nuzzel will handle this.

~~~
mapgrep
I'm a News.me subscriber and it seems to still work the same.

They did sign up me up (I think?) for the Digg Newsletter, which is annoying.
But I still get the News.me newsletter too.

I know part of the original value add for News.me is that it was informed by
bit.ly data on who actually clicked which links. I assume there's very little
of that data left as bit.ly usage is not what it once was. But just by
counting links (and replies? faves?) of people in my twitter stream it is
still very useful for me personally.

------
jiggy2011
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.

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.

~~~
xux
Sendgrid, Mailchimp are email services. They them-self don't provide the
content.

Where as Bit of News is a news services that relies on email. And yes emails
are unstable, especially with the way Gmail handles them / attempt to
segregate different types of emails.

------
vivekpreddy
Jason Calacanis has his Launch Ticker ([http://launch.co/](http://launch.co/))
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.

Not 100% sure, but I think he's launching Inside.com that may have a similar
take...

------
jmzbond
I could say the same about snail mail to a degree.

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??? =)

------
0bp
I like the idea. I received the first mail today. News about negative
happenings over the world. What I personally would like is _positive_ news
delivered to my inbox. For negative news I can watch CNN, Fox and whatnot.

------
tgeorge
I've subscribed to designboom for email
[http://www.designboom.com/](http://www.designboom.com/)

Kinda wish hackaday had one. Btw what's with the countdown?

~~~
crisnoble
I suppose you haven't tried IFTTT yet? I use it (among many other things) to
subscribe to posts from blogs like that all the time. For example:
[https://ifttt.com/recipes/158209-hackaday-posts-to-
email](https://ifttt.com/recipes/158209-hackaday-posts-to-email)

~~~
tgeorge
Thank you!

------
MojoJolo
Hi Xiao, how you doin'? Still using PyTeaser?

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?

~~~
xux
Hi Jolo!

It's part manual, part automated now. I queue up popular stories and pick them
by hand - so there's a diverse range of news.

------
betadreamer
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.

------
biesnecker
SMS must be a bigger platform than email, no?

~~~
bertil
In terms of people covered worldwide, yes. That was my initial reaction too.

It does suffer from proprietary standards and massive costs, tough; message
length is also far too small for news summary, and the addition billion from
e-mail are less interested in global news and more in news that isn’t always
digitalised yet. So: technically right, but for all intents and purposes, it’s
the largest possible for the service considered.

~~~
biesnecker
Good points all, bertil. I appreciate the thoughtful response!

------
califsp484
This reminds me of a service that I used in the past, called Evening Edition
([http://evening-edition.com/](http://evening-edition.com/)). 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.

------
teemo_cute
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).

------
unicornporn
I'm afraid I stopped reading when he called email a platform.

