
Twitter for email - xyclos
http://toastio.com/?ref=1402360104
======
farmdawgnation
Like some of the other commenters, I remain a bit perplexed by this. I realize
we all live busy lives, but the idea of long form communication going the way
of the dodo seems counterintuitive to me. There will always be a need for
someone to send me a message longer than 350 characters periodically. I don't
understand how this actually changes that need.

I'm also not so much a fan of the fact that this service will auto respond to
people saying they should send a shorter email. That's kind of... jerk-like to
be honest. I can see how it would be desirable to someone who just gets too
much email, but I would posit that the better solution is to reduce the amount
of email you're receiving or exercise more aggressive filtering.

~~~
afriend4lyfe
You can still receive long form emails as you always have, I think Toastio is
just offering another option that's more appropriate for day-to-day routine
communication.

I'd imagine auto-respond being an optional feature as well so you don't have
to feel like a jerk if you don't want to. However, I'm not certain about this
but it only seems natural.

~~~
coldtea
> _You can still receive long form emails as you always have, I think Toastio
> is just offering another option that 's more appropriate for day-to-day
> routine communication._

How's that any better than getting your regular emails kept under 350 words
(and retaining all the interoperabillity and tons of tools and support that
email has)?

It's not like most people are emailing essays to my inbox.

Or that even if someone does, I cannot just skip his email or read just enough
to get his point.

~~~
afriend4lyfe
I don't think it's intent is to replace email but to supplement it with a new
feature. Maybe one day the feature can become one of the tools you mention
that regular email already has.

------
nathas
I literally can't think of a single reason why I'd use this... Maybe it's the
Next Big Thing but what's the target market?

* Who is the customer?

* What is the pain point?

* How do you make money?

~~~
nilkn
The target market is presumably people who receive upwards of hundreds of
emails a day, most of which are pretty short or could be short with no
information loss.

I don't get that much email, but I've heard coworkers complain about coming
back from a short business trip to find 450 unread emails.

I guess the idea would be to make this the default method of email, only
resorting to classic email when you absolutely have to break the character
limit.

What scares me is what happens if you're having a back-and-forth email thread,
and then it reaches a point where you simply cannot fit your next reply into
the character limit? You'd be forced to completely disrupt the conversation to
move it elsewhere.

~~~
coldtea
> _What scares me is what happens if you 're having a back-and-forth email
> thread, and then it reaches a point where you simply cannot fit your next
> reply into the character limit? You'd be forced to completely disrupt the
> conversation to move it elsewhere._

I think you're overthiking it.

It's just an ill-thought "copy X service to Y domain" idea, with not many
chances of going anywhere.

I mean "the idea would be to make this the default method of email". As if
that will happen.

------
cones688
> all emails are shown in your feed with no need to open threads to read or
> reply.

Do people just sit and read email all day, surely you then have to "action"
them at the very least? In which case you then have to go merrily scrolling
back up to see which ones you missed whilst you weren't intently staring at
your news feed of emails.

I'd be interested to know who the devs are targetting here? Is there a certain
business area?

------
hihat
You mention on your site that you pull from my existing email accounts. What
happens to existing messages that exceed 350 characters?

------
notjustanymike
I think there's some good ideas here, overshadowed by the the 350 character
limit. A scannable truncated feed of all your emails is worth considering, and
that's what they should be pitching.

The passive aggressive auto-responder is a massively bad idea though. Between
clients, VIPs, and dear family members, I imagine the number of fuck you's
sent to important people would massively outweigh the benefits of automated
snark.

Let's also not forget that some companies have ridiculous email signature
policies. Ours is fairly sane and I'm still looking at over 100 characters.

------
weego
Who on earth would ever want to limit characters in an email. Am I missing
some subtle lampooning in the copy that explains this things existence?

~~~
marknutter
Who on earth would ever want to limit characters on a blog. Oh, wait..

~~~
coldtea
Twitter is not a blog, and tweets are not blog posts. If you were reffering to
that.

That said, sure, many people would want to limit characters on a blog. But
it's THEIR choice to do so (e.g keep a laconic tumblr style blog), not
something forced upon them by the people they communicate with.

And a blog is not a platform for collaboration. Often it's not even open for
discussion (close comments etc).

Each blog is its own universe, and you can eithe read it or not.

Emails, we get from tons of places, including people we don't work with
directly or are not our close friends, and we cannot just shove "keep it
short" to them.

If your Ph.D advisor or an interested VC sends you an email, would you like
for him to get a "keep it under 350 words" autoreply? Or do you want your
depressed friend, who wrote a 5-page email to explain his fears to you, to get
that?

------
mccolin
This is as good an idea as a Jump to Conclusions mat.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Was Office Space shown on a major network last night? That's the second
reference in as many posts.

~~~
zacinbusiness
It made a million dollars!

------
flavor8
Why would they name it toastio and not own the toast.io domain? That seems
like they're trying to be hipster but missing the point.

------
prawn
Screenshots, even showing fragments of the concepts, would be helpful. The
idea seems a little odd and not something I could see myself using, but I
still want to see how it might look.

------
bcardarella
Isn't this exactly what ShortMail was?
[https://shortmail.com/](https://shortmail.com/) (only less characters)

------
halostatue
I'm not sure how this is different than
[https://shortmail.com/](https://shortmail.com/).

------
homersapien
Late April fools joke?

