Please see blog http://blog.eComm.ec

2. RETHINKING EMAIL
Dave Troy
Dave Troy
Chief Executive Officer
davetroy@shortmail.com
@davetroy
facebook.com/davetroy

3. EMAIL, 1971

4. EMAIL, 2011

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

6. TIME TO REINVENT EMAIL?
Start over from first principles

7. ASKING WHY
• Why and how do people
use email?
Victoria Belloti, PARC
Inbox Love, February 2011

8. TO-DO LIST!

9. REMINDERS!

10. TASK &
PROJECT
MANAGEMENT!

11. DOCUMENT
ARCHIVE!

12. GRAND CENTRAL STATION
• “Email is the grand central station of knowledge work.”
• Ohyeah: we also use it for personal & business
communications!
• Obligation Management

13. Induced Cognitive Load! Whoa!

14. Induced Cognitive Load! Whoa!

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?

17. public
asynchronous synchronous
private

18. public
asynchronous synchronous
private

19. public
asynchronous synchronous
private

20. public
asynchronous synchronous
private

21. public
asynchronous synchronous
private

22. public
asynchronous synchronous
private

23. public
asynchronous synchronous
private

24. public
asynchronous synchronous
private

25. public
asynchronous synchronous
private

26. public
asynchronous synchronous
private

27. public
asynchronous synchronous
private

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/

31. STORAGE
Dealing with arbitrarily sized
email is HARD.
Viruses, attachments,
documents, UGH!

32. SPAM
No cost to sender.
Huge amount of traffic.

33. BLAH, BLAH, BLAH.
THE FOREGOING DOCUMENTS
ARE CONFIDENTIAL
This message and the foregoing
documents are intended solely for
the use of the individual(s) or entity
to which they are addressed. It may
contain information that is
privileged, confidential, and exempt
TL;DR from disclosure under applicable
law. If the reader of this message is
not the intended recipient, or the
employee or agent responsible for
Too long, didn’t read. delivering the message to the
intended recipient, any
dissemination, distribution, or
copying of this communication is
strictly prohibited. If you have
received this communication in
error, please notify me immediately
by replying to this email and delete
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.

35. SHORTER
EMAIL.
500 Characters?

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

38. people conciseness!

39. PUBLIC EMAIL?

40. MARKET DESIRE
“Shorter Email Movement”
http://three.sentenc.es/
http://four.sentenc.es/
http://five.sentenc.es/

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!

45. public
asynchronous synchronous
private

46. Shortmail.com Launches Today.

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?

49. And,
Intr oducin g....
X-Character-Limit: 500
X-Reply-Character-Limit: 500

50. HELP US Dave Troy
Chief Executive Officer
MAKE EMAIL davetroy@shortmail.com
@davetroy
BETTER. facebook.com/davetroy
Get your account at
shortmail.com!