About Email, Twitter, and What I am Doing Right Now…

I think it’s time someone put the bullet in email. I am going to use this post to load the chamber. And once I’ve done that, I’m going to get development working on a project they’re gonna think is crazy.

I’d like to explain myself…

I would guess that, like a lot of people, 95% of my snail mail goes straight into the recycle bin. I’ve actually considered asking my apartment building to put a recycle bin next to the mail box; it would save me a few steps that I can use later for my triathlon training.

I seem to get only two important pieces of snail mail: save the date notices and my car insurance.  In the last 14 days I have received one non-spam piece of snail mail. Snail mail is the de facto the vehicle by which people I don’t know or trust attempt to communicate with me. I will call it a muddy communication mechanism.

Email isn’t much different really. In most cases, I am just saved the time of walking down the fire escape to the recycle bin. Yet amazingly every software application on the planet goes to great lengths to integrate with email. In fact, the single greatest technical ulcer-causer of any software application is Outlook integration. Bar none.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that email integration isn’t necessary at the current moment. I’m just wondering if email’s dual-dominance of both the trusted and muddy communication channels is anachronistic. Why are messages from people and applications I know and trust being dumped into an unorganized file with untrusted messages?

The other day I thought, “Does this still make sense?” (Actually, I was on the treadmill.  After which I ran back to the office, designed a screenshot, sent it to our co-founder, Joel, and texted him telling him to check his email. His reply was, “go home.”)

If you’re like me, you inbox is more like a “what do I do first?” box. I have comments from developers, designers, people trying to sell me things, messages from bike fitters, and most importantly, messages from my girlfriend (which always get answered immediately I might add).

Many of these messages are coming from systems that are trying to boost my productivity: hire people, manage finances, complete projects and track bugs. In essence, my productivity applications are taking their trusted communications (messages I definitely want to read) and dumping them into a message mud bog, then trying to clean them up after I deal with them.  What’s black and white and forwarded all over?

For example, Newton’s bookkeeper, Frances, asks me on any given day,

“Hey, Steve do you know what’s happening with this account? I have one file for 9 thousand users and another for 8 thousand users.”
“I don’t know, let me email Jonathan.”
“Jonathan, what’s up with Huge Company, how many users do they have?”
“They called me the other day. They just upgraded to 9 thousand users.”
“Frances, 9,000. Sorry about that.”

Sounds like we need some Outlook integration!

Email should die. It’s like using a donkey to tow a Tesla.

How did I come to this conclusion?

Well, from a disclosure standpoint I have to admit that integrating with Outlook is really hard and pretty darn scary, and even though at Newton we’re probably going capitulate in some areas, I really don’t want to. Developers of software can control the reliability of their own environment, but once you start relying on someone else’s system you start touching all sorts of things you can’t control.  That’s why every time someone says “integrates with outlook” they never use the words “easily” or “never breaks” or “no plug-in required” in the same sentence. Here’s a simple guide to probably the most integrated outlook application on the planet:  http://tinyurl.com/cf6dae (This is the apparently shorter, “cheatsheet version”).

But, more important to me than the technical hurdles is this nagging belief that email might be the problem, not the solution.

Actually, I’m not even sure it’s the problem. I might just think that there’s a better path to productivity than dumping important messages into an uncontrolled, unorganized inbox and then forwarding them around like crazy, all the while trying to clean, reabsorb and reorganize them back into the system that created them.

Why doesn’t Facebook need Outlook integration? Or Twitter? Is it only because they are consumer applications? Or is it because they are communicating with you by way of channels you already trust?

I think it’s the latter.

I am left to wonder if we should rethink how our business applications communicate with the people they serve. The mail paradigm is not just old, it is centuries old. I can think of some software companies already leveraging clean communication channels, Yammer is an interesting one. I think I I’ll try to build another.  Who knew that Shakespeare didn’t like email?:  “Mud is not the fountain that gave drink to thee.”