Uncarved

Chris Clark has written a piece that offers an interesting perspective on some ideas I had explored in a post I wrote last year, called “Don’t Ask Me for My Email Address“.

Clark writes [emphasis mine]:

Email has grown gnarly in the decades past, as we’ve started receiving dozens or hundreds of spam and bacn messages a day. I have multiple server side rules and filters just to keep it in check, and an inbox policy of flagging anything I care about before running a slightly-modified version of John Gruber’s Inbox Sweeper to keep things tidy.

Reply-all gaffes, top-posting etiquette, plaintext versus HTML, attachment limits, inbox limits… everybody hits them. By comparison the simplicity and clarity of Facebook mail is impressive. A Facebook message requires (privacy controls pending) a symmetrically-acknowledged relationship between parties, and on top of that spam-murdering convenience it’s self-threading, low friction, and lightweight.

In a nutshell, Facebook is better than email unless you’re some kind of email expert. And for email’s successor to support all the expert features of email, none of its myriad problems would be solved.

It’s been a recurring theme this week, but the Pro users of yesteryear’s products, the people with the biggest investment in old technologies, are not the people who should be calling the shots in the design of their successors. These are the people who complain that an iPad can’t have third party software installed from anywhere but the App Store, ignoring the massive convenience and security gains the policy affords average users. These are the people who are still using slotted screwdrivers and Edison light fixtures and manual transmission cars.

I would specifically add that I find Clark’s argument that Facebook messaging improves upon e-mail only within the context of social communication; I find their messaging model incapable of replacing e-mail as a tool for work (email’s ability to run filters and rules, organize, and archive information comes a big workflow helper for email).

That having been said, however, maybe e-mail as a personal communications tool is for power users now (or, perhaps more aptly, once again).

My parting thought here isn’t to close your e-mail accounts and move to Facebook. Rather that – as we enter a new year, reminding ourselves to take fresh perspectives – is that it’s terribly easy to over-value past investments in our efforts build today what will stand tomorrow.

[Via Daring Fireball].

Uncarved Design, email, Facebook, wu wei

These days, anyone organizing competent promotional efforts (events, organizations, themselves, etc) invests various degrees of their attentions to online efforts. One reason for this is economics: efforts to “spread the word” online has the potential to reach more people at the expense of fewer resources and, therefore, less money.

One of the most commonly-leveraged contact points has become the email inbox.

Nearly everyone has an email address, and many of us have several – one for work, one personal. I presently have four, for example.

Generally speaking, people have largely become very comfortable communicating over email. It doesn’t carry the “burden” of requiring an immediate response, unlike a phone call, and can be whatever length the author thinks is appropriate for the correspondence.

It’s also easy to share information around the conversation in emails, by including a URL that points to further information on some website, or by attaching photos or other small files. This capability allows promoters to keep their message concise (if they’re clever), and yet provide leads to supplemental information for those with interest in pursuing the deeper details of the message.

Finally, it allows the author to write up a single message that can be delivered to a (theoretically) limitless number of people.

For all these reasons, one of the most common techniques that promoters adopt is the email campaign. They focus efforts on accumulating email addresses of people that could potentially be interested in their product, services, performances, or whatever it is they’re on a mission to promote.

Some years ago, I would share my email address with people and organizations whose news I’d have interest in following: bands, artists, pro-social organizations, and more.

But after a while, I noticed my inbox just blowing up.

The more I gave my email address out, the more emails I’d have to deal with every day.

I’m not really interested in anyone’s ideas on how I can be making millions from home, offers for debt reduction, or substances that promise me the ability to drive nails through wooden boards with my penis (promise me the same for granite, however, and maybe we’ll talk).

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General Thoughts email, promotion, social media, unplugging