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What properties does email have that asynchronous messaging services (e.g. Signal) do not?

• ThatGeoGuy 10y ago
  Cross-platform (Chrome web-apps don't count), Federated, Distributed, to name a few. The reason email is so entrenched is probably because of these reasons entirely. Being able to send a message from any provider to any provider certainly helped spread adoption easily.
• NoGravitas 10y ago
  There are protocol properties, and client properties. I think some of both are important. ### Protocol * Easily federated * Identifiers can be memorable/meaningful (unlike phone numbers) while still being globally unique (thanks to federation) * Device independent (not tied to a phone number, can generally use the same account on different devices) * Can contact people you don't know/haven't met (this is possible with Signal, but they'd have to publicly share their personal cell phone number, which is a no-go). ### Client * Optimized for longer-form, less immediate messaging (folders, drafts, rich text) * MIME attachments (Signal supports only a limited number of predefined types of attachments) I feel like you could probably layer an email-equivalent on top of Matrix, but I'm not 100% sure about that.