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Of course people who build messaging systems can see themselves as competing with email. It is, however, a bad sign if they feel that way. Specialized applicat
by Udo 16y ago
Of course people who build messaging systems can see themselves as competing with email. It is, however, a bad sign if they feel that way.
Specialized applications, such as task and project management, should have nice and efficient user interfaces. In the best cases, these UIs reflect the nature of the operations the product is designed for. Email, on the other hand, is a general-purpose messaging system and it really excels at two things: notification and also communication in small groups.
Taking this into account, it should become obvious why there is something wrong when a company considers themselves threatened or limited by email. And there is an even greater problem if it's the other way around and vendors feel like they are replacing email with something much better. Those ever-so-overwhelmingly celebrated visionaries at 37signals should consider why people use email in the first place, and then possibly take a step back and chill out.
- jamesbritt 16y ago"Those ever-so-overwhelmingly celebrated visionaries at 37signals should consider why people use email in the first place, and then possibly take a step back and chill out." I've had to use Basecamp lately because of a client, and it is an exercise in frustration. Basecamp uses E-mail that isn't E-mail. I get E-mail that my E-mail client says it's sent to me from manager@someco.com, but it's really not. I have to look carefully to see that a reply is not going to go back to that address, but to Basecamp instead. And I have to format my reply in a special way do that it can be machine parsed at the other end. Compulsory top-posting :(. I often get messages that refer to "the attached image". But it's never attached. The image lives at the other end of some link. Often that link takes me to a page that then gives me the real download link. All these intermediary steps just makes stuff take longer while breaking the mental model of how something (E-mail) works. If the goal is to capture all of the messages exchanged among project members, and E-mail gets involved (as it inevitably will), then you're better off letting E-mail be E-mail and working with it instead of trying to supplant it.