8 ms·
Show HN: Automatically Rename HEY's 'Imbox' to 'Inbox'
- coconido 6y agoHahahaha love this!
- rydre 6y agoLol this is good
- colinramsay 6y agoWe discussed this at work. It's smug in a way that I can't articulate. Our first thought was that it was a typo, then we found the actual part of their website that tells us "no, it's not a typo". Thanks for that guys, I appreciate you changing my expectation to meet your contrived brand of UX design. edit: typo :D
- alecbenzer 6y agoI didn't mind most of the marketing, but FWIW I saw Jason Fried talk the first time in the hey walkthrough and I did find something insufferably smug about the way he spoke. But I still think it's a cool product and luckily I won't have to hear Jason Fried talk while using it.
- papito 6y agoThey committed the cardinal sin of design - not keeping it simple. People will think IT IS A TYPO, because it looks like one, especially in the age of zero attention spans. Very few will go on a quest to figure it out. With new products, humans need an anchor to familiar features in order to feel comfortable. What Makes Things Cool https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/01/what-makes-things-cool/508772/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/01/what-ma...
- Brian_K_White 6y agoIt isn't supposed to be instant message box? Is everyone just that dry and I'm the slow guy not getting that everyone gets it?
- _0o6v 6y agoI saw "Imbox" and thought, I will never use this product.
- mc32 6y agoI think in their minds the choice was: Impbox and Imbox. The least bad prevailed. But that is an awful name that sounds like a toddler not getting their consonants right.
- justaguyhere 6y agoFor me it was their marketing message. Empty, annoying, misleading and filled with pats on the back, Apple style. Except I can't find anything innovative
- kristianc 6y agoFor me it was the ‘I want you to send us a cringey letter straight up begging for an invite’.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- srik 6y agoIt’s a classic marketing strategy that has an extremely high success rate - making the prospect justify why they are a fit for you instead of the usual other way.
- Macha 6y agoOr they drag it out so long that everyone loses interest because their friends aren't there (Google+)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- randomsearch 6y ago
- samwillis 6y agoitsnotatypo.com
- smarx007 6y agoThis is truly amusing!
- pronouncedjerry 6y agoHey that was slick
- trollied 6y agoHas anyone used this service, and why should someone ditch their current provider to use it? All I've seen is the founder kicking off about Apple murdering kittens, which put me off looking any further. I've got my own domain hosted on google apps, and it just works. Rarely get spam, I'm used to the UI, I don't want to change my email address because I don't need to. Having said the above, I guess I am not the target audience for this.
- agloeregrets 6y agoApple's behavior here is actually pretty horrible and definitely illegal but yeah DHH has been hilariously loud in his war here. Granted he probably has to be to fight the largest company in the world with 50 people. I’ve been using it for about 3 days so far. The product is pretty great regardless of the funny spelling, they are launching a business version in a few months to allow you to bring your own custom domains. The notable twists I’ve seen so far is the inbox filtering logic that allows you to blatantly say “I don’t want emails from this address ever.” Gmail’s “mark spam” stuff doesn’t quite work for this and stuff eventually gets unmarked. It’s like the worlds easiest unsubscribe with no run around with unsubscribe dark patterns. The privacy stuff looks pretty good too. It seems to me that the iOS app is unbelievably fast (ironic considering...) like time to go from closed app to “see new emails” is easily A few seconds faster than both Gmail and Outlook. I’m tempted to pay to be honest. I’ve been really happy. But then there’s the whole “will I ever get an updated iOS app?” Thing that puts water on that. Edit: why am I being downvoted? The Head of the House Antitrust Commission directly called Apple’s behavior out and the EU announced Investigations of Apple’s behavior. The rest is just my option of a product. Lol
- HatchedLake721 6y agoI believe you're downvoted for saying "Apple's behavior here is actually pretty horrible and definitely illegal" without any substance. Apple is not doing anything illegal (future regulations might change that), nor anything horrible. There might be conflicts of interest between App Store and likes of Apple Music and Spotify having to pay IAP fees, but there's nothing wrong with 15-30% distributor fee to access a unified market of 155 countries where all the headache of payments, local sales taxes, APIs, etc are taken care of. People forget the 2000s with Windows Mobile, CAB files and xda-developers, and the 50% shops take to get your software/game distributed and on a shelf in front of customers.
- pgm8705 6y agoI am loving HEY so far, but this is one thing I hope they walk back. I get it, it's not the same as a traditional "inbox," but why does that matter? "Imbox" is annoying to look at.
- heyoo 6y agoIt matters because they need to make it very explicit to newcomers that this is not your normal inbox. I think they should create a way to rename the Imbox though, so that when people get it, they don't have to look at the weird "typo" anymore.
- klohto 6y agoGenuinely need to block Hey in keywords now. The marketing is too much.
- ksec 6y agoAre you suggesting the drama with Apple was part of their marketing? Because I dont see lots of Hey from marketing side, I do see lots of hey on the argument against Apple App Store.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dbbk 6y agoOf course it is. They've weaponised it to their advantage. The actual solution to getting their app approved is obvious. But they've decided there's a greater gain in PR by 'taking Apple on'.
- lghh 6y ago> The actual solution to getting their app approved is obvious. It's not obvious to me. Mind elaborating on what the obvious solution is? Giving up 30% of your revenue on what's likely to be your largest platform when your competitors don't have to isn't obvious, so there must be another option I'm missing.
- dbbk 6y agoYes, the obvious solution is to implement IAP. This is what Apple says they need to do. That said, they don't have to give up 30% of their revenue, they could make it more expensive to sign up via IAP if they wanted to offset the loss. Not great for the consumer, but at least it would work.
- tguedes 6y agoNo you cannot do this. Apple does not allow you to put a higher price on iOS than other places. Also the issue is Apple's inconsistency. Netflix and Spotify do the exact same thing HEY is trying to do but Apple has done nothing for them because of this bullshit distinction between consumer and business apps??? Why do consumers apps not need IAP but business apps do? What they're doing is exactly what mafias do. Look for the weak, force them to need your help or else, then extract as much money as you can. I love Apple and all their products but this services growth strategy is putting a bad taste in a bunch of people's mouths.
- robertwalsh0 6y ago> But it's not clever. It's just annoying. To each their own, sure, but yikes there are so many more things in the world to be annoyed by right now.
- marcosnils 6y agoChanging my cool and fancy "Imbox" to "Inbox" because I didn't care to test with users in 3...2...1..
- brongondwana 6y agoWe went the other way... https://twitter.com/BronGondwana/status/1273790422947487744 https://twitter.com/BronGondwana/status/1273790422947487744
- brongondwana 6y agoMore seriously though, I think the internal comment on Fastmail's slack that I saw straight afterwards nailed it: "If you have to set up a domain to point to your help pages to explain why something isn't a typo, you're doing it wrong".
- dewey 6y ago> "If you have to set up a domain to point to your help pages to explain why something isn't a typo, you're doing it wrong". It gets people talking, just normal marketing. It's not like people can't use it without understanding why it says Imbox.
- Mnlfrgr 6y agolooool, love this!
- dsalzman 6y agoNot being able to use my own domain name with Hey is a non starter for me. It’s like not being able to transfer your cell phone number when you switch carriers. Horrible.
- chinathrow 6y agoThat is a coming feature.
- hackissimo123 6y agoWait, I can't use my own domain name? I was thinking of checking Hey out, thanks for saving me the bother.
- aeonflux 6y agoYeah, that sucks big time. I can accept the closed ecosystem, not being able to use open protocols. If you wan't to do something far away from known standards, then this might be a requirement. But locking users into the service like this gets into the way of their general stance. Perhaps they plan to introduce custom domains in future? Maybe this just didn't fit into the initial release?
- BiteCode_dev 6y ago> Perhaps they plan to introduce custom domains in future? Maybe this just didn't fit into the initial release? Most probably. This is how basecamp always did thing, even back when it was called 37signals: they release a MVP, they generate money as early as they can, then they start agile feedback loop, improving the product throught many iterations. They were one of the teams that made agile popular after all. They also promote the philosophy of rejecting features and not noting the requests for them down. Only a feature that has been requested and rejected enough times pass their "filter" of something that should be added to the product. I'm betting a custom domain name will pass such filter and end up being implemented in one year or two.
- edu 6y agoIt seems it's already on their roadmap, see DHH's tweet: https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1232840836733292545 https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1232840836733292545
- meerita 6y agoI saw Imbox and other fancy UI trends and deleted my account the same day.
- jnmandal 6y agoI've been watching DHH grandstand about this on twitter for the last 8 months or so. His commentary coupled with the overall marketing message for this service has made it appear slightly elitist and self-congratulatory but I dont really mind that since a lot of tech people are that way. I love rails so I was hoping this would be awesome but between the invite-only sign up and seeing some of the impractical design decisions they have implemented, I don't think I will be using it, at least not any time soon. I really want someone to develop a "better email" for the general populace that would be intuitive and offer chat-app-inspired improvements that could really supplant email but seeing what I have this service really seems like something geared toward techies.
- alecbenzer 6y agoIt sounds like it's invite-only just until July.
- makach 6y agoThis is the extension I was looking for.
- Mnlfrgr 6y agomy pleasure :)
- Traster 6y agoThere is no way that Hey is going to tolerate this 30% tax on their Imbox
- BiteCode_dev 6y agoI love the presentation text.
- jedimastert 6y ago~~I'm surprised no one here has mentioned (or possibly not noticed) that the developer is an employee of Hey. This is definitely some sort of bad press marketing thing.~~ Edit: actually, it turns out I'm just an idiot and shouldn't comment on things before I fully wake up. That's my b.
- dewey 6y agoBecause he's not an employee of Basecamp / Hey. What makes you say that? https://twitter.com/manuel_frigerio/status/1273935253887909889 https://twitter.com/manuel_frigerio/status/12739352538879098...
- michaelt 6y agojedimastert probably thought that because the developer's e-mail is @hey.com Which would be a reasonably line of thought, were hey not an e-mail service.
- giarc 6y agoIs that because he has a @hey address? It doesn't look like he's an employee of Basecamp/Hey after browsing his site for a bit (https://manuel.friger.io/ https://manuel.friger.io/)
- Mnlfrgr 6y agoHey, I'm definitely not an Hey employee :)
- viktour19 6y agoI wonder how much of the annoyance with the term "Imbox" has to do with the dichotomy between System 1 and System 2 thinking. When I see "Inbox", I put almost no thought into what it means admittedly because I've been exposed to the term so many times much less so with "Imbox".
- bookmarkable 6y agoWhen Dad jokes turn into UI labels.
- DrinkWater 6y agoI amazed how much people get annoyed by such a small and insignificant detail. I also noticed the "Imbox" but i dont believe i thought about it for more than 1 second.
- PragmaticPulp 6y agoIt's a minor distraction that isn't necessary and doesn't add anything. When I see a typo, I instinctively go back and re-read the word or sentence to make sure I didn't misread something. The last thing I want in my e-mail client is additional mental overhead. It's a minor detail, but it's also unnecessary, subtracts more than it adds, and it's easy to fix.
- alecbenzer 6y agoIt's bad, but it's such a minor flaw. If you won't use hey because of that, either you don't care at all about any of the actual features (in which case, sure, don't use it) or you're being dramatic.
- nhumrich 6y ago> doesnt add anything This entire discussion thread exists because of that one little thing. In other words, it adds marketing value. Getting people to discuss your product, even if negative, is still free marketing.
- u6eexrtxjjxjexr 6y agoDoesn't add anything for users, then.
- Brian_K_White 6y agoYou don't think analysis of exactly that sort of behavior is a valid discussion or a valid component in evaluation their character? And you don't think the character & culture of a company is a valid ingredient in deciding whether to use them and pay them? I do.
- deleted 6y ago
- fortran77 6y agoMy problem is I associate DHH and the Basecamp folks with the "Web2.0" of yesterday, and slow, hard-to-scale Ruby and Rails stuff. (Remember the year when everything looked like the RoR "To Do list" demo app?). All their branding, personal and professional, is a decade old.
- sho 6y ago> slow, hard-to-scale Ruby and Rails I'm sure the tech teams at Shopify and Sephora, both of which regularly do 50k+ requests per second, or maybe Airbnb, Github or Hulu will be super eager to hear your opinions about how Rails is slow and can't scale.
- tamatech 6y agoSays the person with "fortran" in their handle
- aurbano 6y agoEdit: Missed a word in the quote.
- henryaj 6y agoWha? The quote literally says you can export your email and contacts.
- shhsshs 6y agoThat sounds like you can export your emails when you’re done.
- acjohnson55 6y agoDoesn't it say that you can export your emails right there in your quote?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- saviorand 6y agoI endorse this project. Finally, something the world needs (though does not deserve)
- alexwennerberg 6y agoHEY looked interesting until I found out they don't support IMAP. When I think about the problems with email, I don't think primarily about the interface, but about the fact that the open standards on which it is based are increasingly being ignored.
- agloeregrets 6y agoThat’s all super fair, but they also argue this direction allows them to innovate as well. Notably, their direction resembles a rails approach and lets the server do more work. (Because Hey is instead just a standard API client, whereas the client can tell the server things that you just can’t do with IMAP.) I imagine with the Apple situation they are working on adding support currently however, even if it’s reduced. They need an iOS plan B.
- HeXetic 6y agoWhat do you think they can do with their custom API that IMAP can't? IMAP has server-side search and a file-based representation of things like configuration. It may not be as easy to write as a JSON API, but once you do, the interface is flexible enough to really accomplish anything.
- dewey 6y agoTheir whole "filtering everything out until you whitelist the sender" approach which is the one feature that sets HEY apart from the other providers wouldn't really work with normal IMAP. As for IMAP with more JSON there would also be Fastmails https://jmap.io/ https://jmap.io/
- zimpenfish 6y ago> Their whole "filtering everything out until you whitelist the sender" approach Unless I'm missing something about what they're doing, this is a basic SIEVE script that filters anything not explicitly whitelisted into a folder.
- shwoopdiwoop 6y agoYou should charge $9.90 per year for this.
- d0m 6y agoUsers of every startups: You have a typo Founders: Thanks Users of Hey/Basecamp: You have a typo Founders: No, this isn't a typo. And we built a website to show you're wrong: http://itsnotatypo.com http://itsnotatypo.com
- computronus 6y agoAnd, perhaps ironically, that domain name cannot contain the necessary apostrophe to be spelled correctly, so it itself also has a typo.
- torgoguys 6y agoAnyone remember when gmail came out and Google was certain their searching/filtering/archiving capabilities were so good that they declared you would never need to delete email again...so much so that they didn't include delete functionality at first? With enough feedback they thankfully backed down. The Basecamp folks are opinionated and strong-willed, so I'm not sure that they will back down on the unfortunately named "imbox," but I hope they do. Fortunately this isn't as colossal of a mistake as the no-delete-gmail mistake, and in the end, it's not a huge deal (q.v., the name of the iPad was a big deal to some when it came out) but they clearly were too clever for their own good here.
- janeshmane 6y agoIs email actually an urgent problem for people? Most of my personal communication is outside of email these days. In fact, I have gmail up for texting more than sending emails. Unsubscribing from commercial email generally works fine. My inbox feels very much under control. Maybe I am just not important enough for an Imbox.
- chrisseaton 6y agoYeah almost all my notifications come through apps. I get about five To twenty emails a day and just action them when they come in. I don’t need to ‘manage’ an inbox.
- blickentwapft 6y agoEmail is an exceedingly hard thing to change. Nothing much succeeds in actually changing the way it works. What does work is developing communication systems unrelated to email ie slack. My prediction is that Hey will fail but will pivot into something else which the developers will take as a victory.
- askjdlkasdjsd 6y agoWow, I find it amazing how some innocent founders find their posts/tweets/etc blocked, ignored or shadowbanned and somehow, if you're someone, you get attention everywhere for free. Doesn't seem very fair. I thought at this point hacker news' spam detectors would flare up and stop bumping everything 'Hey' to the top. Not trying to put on a tinfoil hat but, there is simply no way in hell to get this level of PR and attention unless a significant portion of all Hey activities have been carefully and methodically planned for weeks and months. I deal with the same difficulties myself and the App store mafia cut is a real problem but I just don't think I'll ever be able to trust them again with such aggressive PR tactics.
- jahbrewski 6y agoReading the comments and is no one missing out on the irony that simply choosing "Imbox" over "Inbox" got all of the people on this thread talking about their product, and onto the front page of HN? Yeah it's goofy. Yeah it's controversial. That's absolutely the point and that's what gets people talking. I think it's genius.
- troughway 6y agoJust shows how gullible and hubristic HN really is. "I don't like it so I am going to complain about it." Good one. I guess every community needs to have it's own Slashdot moment, at least once.
- solarkraft 6y agoI love the name Imbox because it reminds me of Cheems, my favorite character from Doge lore.
- dvfjsdhgfv 6y agoOn the one hand, I hate Hey's aggressive marketing, but on the other - any serious competition to Gmail is a very good thing.