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Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence

• hyperpallium2 5y ago
  This concept for a forum could be interesting. I sometimes write thoughtful replies to HN submissions many hours later, after ruminating, but HN has moved on to the next new thing. (It is a "news" site after all).
  • passerby1 5y ago
    I catch myself recent years of trying to propose a forum for communications at company or for my startup project. However I stop myself after 1-2 tries many years ago because I feel like team won't accept it. Maybe I'm a fatalist, but feels like some (often younger than me) people want instant communication, instant result, instant reward. In everything. Probably it's good, not sure. But a Forum concept does not fit into that world, unfortunately.
  • tkok89 5y ago
    I think this could be an interesting idea for news sites especially. It would be less addictive and I could use a specific time of a day to spend on news platform instead of checking it ever so often. I already use HN with a point limit of 250 so it doesn't update so often. What would be the easiest way to implement Pony messenger philosophy into it and only see a front page that updates once a day? I know that this sounds a lot like an ancient technology called a newspaper :)
• gotostatement 5y ago
  I think it's a really cool idea but you have a network effect issue. I would expect it to be hard to get enough of my friends on it for it to be useful. Integrations with existing message apps and environments would be ideal, though I'm not exactly sure how that would look.
  • mrweasel 5y ago
    There’s also the “issue” of people most likely also have other types of communications with the same people they’ll have on Pony. Means that you could get in a situation where most of their messages will still come in on other channels, and the all the mindfulness will quickly be lost. It’s a great idea, but without uninstalling other messaging clients the goal of a mindful messaging life seem impossible.
    • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
      Yeah that's definitely been the case in my experience as well! Some people just send me texts—and that's fine, that's how they want to communicate with me. But other people have embraced Pony and we use it all the time, mostly for things that don't benefit from being sent instantly. I've found that some people "get it" and some people do not. Pony doesn't fix all your other messaging but it creates an opportunity to have mindful correspondence online that you don't otherwise have.
  • karmanyaahm 5y ago
    Building such a thing as a Matrix client might be an interesting concept. Interesting idea tho.
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    Hey thanks a lot. Network effects will definitely be the #1 challenge. I considered integrations—I first tried Pony as an email service, actually. I wanted it to be as accessible as possible. This led to a lot of problems, specifically you get this asymmetry and confusion of some people being on Pony and others being in instant real-time. All of our existing platforms come with norms and expectations, and using a non-instant integration was often perceived as anti-social, which was really unfortunate because I was trying to build something pro-social. You also lose this effect of it being a special place. Anyway, it is hard to get people on, but fortunately the idea seems to be unique enough and resonate enough with that there's already a seemingly dedicated (albeit small) userbase. It suggests that maybe network effects will be possible to overcome. Everything has to start somewhere!
• alexk307 5y ago
  Great idea!
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    Thanks a lot <3.
• carreau 5y ago
  What the best/recognizable way to advertise the someone can write to me using pony. Can there be like ponyto://myusername@ponymessenger.com ?
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    Thank you, that's a good question. I've been trying to figure that out. The URI scheme is not something that has occurred to me, but that seems like a pretty good idea—at least for tech people. Otherwise, maybe a QR code, or at least getting into services like Linktree, so that logo and concept becomes recognizable. Am I missing anything else?
    • carreau 5y ago
      It's unclear to me. It's also hard to have something recognizable, but a even just a dynamic URL on the main website: https://www.ponymessenger.com/contactme/<username> https://www.ponymessenger.com/contactme/<username> where a user can have an easy to customize message, or even a pre-done one "Hi I'm using pony for my inbox, you can send me a message using pony by doing XXX,". That way in slides, mails, ... I can just put "contact me at URL". Maybe also a mail server bridge ? If So write to <user>@ponymessenger.com it reply with "You message will be once a day, you can edit and cancel, by clicking this link".
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
• tkdc926 5y ago
  Might want to consider a name change. https://www.ponylang.io/ https://www.ponylang.io/
  • amunir 5y ago
    Wait till he hears about the small horse!
• roeles 5y ago
  What a great idea! I currently have my smartphone offline for the majority of the time (you can call me for urgent stuff), and enable WiFi to achieve the same sort of effect. This is much better I think, because it removes control. I sometimes still have the urge to check often for responses.
• dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
  Hello HN! Pony is a messenger without a send button. When you're finished composing a message, instead of sending it right away, you put it in your outbox. Once a day—in the morning (5:30am), afternoon (12:00pm), or evening (6:30pm)—Pony picks up anything that's in your outbox and delivers any new messages that may have arrived. You can edit a message until it's picked up, move it into drafts, or delete it altogether. I built Pony because email makes it hard to keep up lasting correspondences with people. I think the main reason for this is because email is dominated by "transactional" communication—time-critical messages that are tied to some particular interaction: order confirmations, password resets, etc. All of these things tend to bury interpersonal correspondence. The same goes for texting and chat platforms: they may be good for keeping in touch with people and for making plans, but messages come and go quickly and they're not really spaces designed for more thoughtful correspondence. Pony, on the other hand, encourages thoughtful communication and acts as a barrier to anything time-sensitive. It's a highly predictable space and unless you've received a delivery, you know that when you open the app, nothing will have changed. And although Pony encourages you to take your time and not communicate reflexively, it also sets a "micro-deadline" every day, which creates structure that helps keep the correspondence going. I've started a blog, so if you're interested in reading more: https://www.ponymessenger.com/blog/2021-11-15/humans-are-not-instant-so-why-is-all-of-our-technology https://www.ponymessenger.com/blog/2021-11-15/humans-are-not.... (RSS is available at https://www.ponymessenger.com/feeds/blog.xml https://www.ponymessenger.com/feeds/blog.xml.) If you like this concept, please sign up and try it out! It's available for iOS, Android, and the web. This is a completely self-funded project. You can contribute inside the iOS app using In-app Purchases or in the web app using Braintree/PayPal. You can also buy me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dmitryminkovsky https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dmitryminkovsky.
• foodstances 5y ago
  You've reinvented UUCP
  • panzagl 5y ago
    Earlier in the week we had discussions on how various social networks were just replacements for finger, so maybe he's on to something.
    • causasui 5y ago
      Someone once told me the key to a successful startup is to pick a protocol of one of the well-known ports and bring it to the browser.
• vorpalhex 5y ago
  Neat idea. Lovely interface. However, no mention of monetization strategy. Are you selling my personal data? Do you show me ads? Do you intend to sell subscriptions? Also, no E2E _and_ it's not open source/self-hostable. I need at least one of those. Either I don't need to trust you because things are E2E encrypted, or you establish trust by letting me see and verify code.
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    Thank you! I really appreciate it. > However, no mention of monetization strategy. Thanks for bringing this up. I was hoping to give a brief introduction and then to field questions. I will definitely not be selling personal data, or data otherwise. I do have some monetization ideas, and I'm really excited to try them out. They're all going to fit nicely with the core concept of the platform: periodicity. One of them is advertising, and there are others. If I can find good features to sell with subscriptions, I will. The important thing at this point for me is to demonstrate value, and then to monetize without disappointing or alienating users. > Also, no E2E Pony is currently a one-person startup and the focus has been on fleshing out the concept, building solid apps for desktop and mobile, and getting those apps into the hands of users. Privacy is something I take incredibly seriously on a deeply personal, ideological level. While I consider myself a really solid full stack developer and believe that Pony's infrastructure is secure, I do not have the requisite experience with cryptography to honestly represent to people that this is a private platform. I hope that with enough traction and some investment, I'll be able to hire an expert to help add privacy features that I can advertise in good faith.
    • pbourke 5y ago
      > While I consider myself a really solid full stack developer and believe that Pony's infrastructure is secure, I do not have the requisite experience with cryptography to honestly represent to people that this is a private platform. It would be great if this existed as an infrastructure-level service. Something like the Signal “API” that allows apps like yours to be built on top.
      • 5y ago
• malfist 5y ago
  I love this thought process. I've gotten into the habit of only checking my email at work when I sign in and when I leave for the day. I know you don't integrate with email because of some time critical messages, but I wonder if you could still integrate as an email/sms app and allow temporary overrides (kinda like how pihole let's you pause it for 5 minutes). That'd be downright awesome
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    > I love this thought process. Thank you so much. > but I wonder if you could still integrate as an email/sms app and allow temporary overrides ... like how pihole let's you pause it for 5 minutes I'm leaning towards avoiding that sort of thing. Like how Gmail has a "snooze" or how Apple's Screen Time has timers that lock you out, etc. That stuff really stresses me out. I tried to make this as simple as possible and as "human" as possible, in the sense that the human experience—or cognitive processes, or biological cycles—plays out on the human timescale, which seems to be more like the day or week or year than minutes or hours.
  • mistermann 5y ago
    > I love this thought process. And I love this one.
  • kwhitefoot 5y ago
    I'm retired now but for quite a few years I made it a habit to not open my email until lunch time. That way I could work all morning, my most energetic time of day, on things that had been discussed the day before without being distracted or having a bad conscience about not immediately acting on new requests. Anyone who needed my attention immediately could use the telephone and hardly anyone ever did.
    • mlangenberg 5y ago
      That is also my approach. It takes some courage to do, but makes for a much calmer workday.
• steelbrain 5y ago
  Thanks for working on this. It reminds me of a social app called Slowly (https://slowly.app/en/ https://slowly.app/en/) where you write "letters" to people and they are delivered based on the approximate physical distance between them. It's common for letters across countries to take >12 or sometimes even >24 hours. It's led people to a lot of meaningful relationships/friendships, they publish some as stories: https://slowly.app/en/story/featured/ https://slowly.app/en/story/featured/
  • ronaldj 5y ago
    I discovered Slowly just over a month ago. Really surprised about the lack of spam and the interactions I've had.
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    I hadn't seen Slowly. That's awesome—thanks for sharing. I really like how it's tied to physical distance. I really want to add more delivery modes, with geographical distance being one possible factor. For me a big deal is not just the slow delivery, but the inability to instantly send as well. The presence of a send button has this effect of making me send things that aren't ready. I don't intend Pony to encourage people to edit and edit and edit forever, but I've found in my personal usage that sometimes I write a message, put it in my outbox, and then some number of hours later I'll think of something randomly and edit it a bit. Or I'll change my mind and delete it.
    • ISL 5y ago
      The ability to edit really is a wonderful feature. I find that I perpetually tweak forum/social media/Slack posts a minute or two after posting, just to improve clarity. The idea of email (even if it carries with it some versioning history) that is editable is really nice. Is there a way to interface Pony with email directly, so that an app isn't required? I can imagine giving ISL@ponymail.com out to people with the clear expectation that my SLA for a reply is 24-48 hours instead of instantaneous and that my SLA for their correspondence is also similar.
      • 5y ago
• mro_name 5y ago
  wonderful
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    Thank you :))
    • mro_name 5y ago
      recently came across thoughts on the contemplative nature of telecommunication in http://viznut.fi/texts-en/permacomputing.html http://viznut.fi/texts-en/permacomputing.html (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27199225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27199225)
      • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
        Thanks a lot of the link. If anything else comes to mind, would really appreciate hearing about it. Edit: wow yes, the telecommunication section contains some sentences I might have written myself over the last 6 months: > The allowable time would depend on the context: in some cases, a second would be too much, while in some others, even several days would be fine. ... The exchange of messages and information would be slow and contemplative rather than fast and reactive. Also the via HN post is very interesting too. I remember seeing that but I didn't check it out then.
• Pxtl 5y ago
  That's a charming idea. I could see how email bridging might be a way to achieve network effect, but then email bridging might just turn it into another email client. I'm surprised you took the approach that pickup = delivery. I would assume you'd have a lag between them, with only cancellation allowed in that gap. Basically "you have N minutes to reconsider this thing you wrote, if you've changed your mind and want to edit it you have to defer to next pickup". I would think a "mindful correspondence" system would have an enforced gap between composition and delivery to avoid "oops I clicked send at 6:29 PM but it's wrong and I need to change it". I mean, this is based on my experience in email and twitter, which you've rightly identified as the opposite of "mindful" correspondence (where "submit" and "deliver" are the same action), and personal experience with business apps that make heavy use of fixed daily jobs (where "submit" and "deliver" are the same action at one very specific deadline that everybody is rushing to hit).
  • justusthane 5y ago
    I'm not at all involved with this, but just based on reading the website and reading your comment I think you might have a slight misconception of how this works. There is no send button. You write drafts, and then at the pickup/deliver time, Pony picks up all the drafts from your outbox, and delivers any mail for you at the same time. Therefore, you can change your mind about what you've written at any point before it gets picked up.
    • Pxtl 5y ago
      Yes, but pickup/delivery time is daily/scheduled right? So if you compose and submit a draft at 10 seconds before pickup/delivery time, you have no time to reconsider. That's what I'm getting at. I would assume a "no drafts submitted before X minutes before pickuup" rule to mandate a minimum reconsideration time.
      • justusthane 5y ago
        I understand what you're saying now, sorry. Personally I don't think that's necessary and think it just complicates a simple platform. To me, it seems akin to writing a letter and putting it in your mailbox. You can go and retrieve the letter any time before the mail carrier picks it up, but after they've picked it up it's gone.
• andrewshadura 5y ago
  "FidoNet experience" :)
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    :)) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlXNXdf6Xh0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlXNXdf6Xh0
• tomaskafka 5y ago
  I love the idea and the brand, but that's how I use email anyway :).
• feanaro 5y ago
  If you made this a Matrix client, I think you'd really have something. Using the matrix-rust-sdk, you could even get E2EE that people are requesting for free.
  • bogidon 5y ago
    Big plus one. In order to encourage (what I strongly believe to be much needed) experimentation with personal messaging we have to break away from having each. new. client. establish it's own network. Otherwise competition in this field will always be limited. Matrix I believe is currently the most promising answer to this problem.
    • zaik 5y ago
      or the Internet Standard XMPP
  • motoxpro 5y ago
    I haven't heard of even one of the things you mentioned
    • cvs268 5y ago
      FWIW, I had heard of Matrix, Rust, and E2EE. :-)
    • computershit 5y ago
      You should definitely check Matrix out: https://matrix.org/docs/guides/getting-involved https://matrix.org/docs/guides/getting-involved
    • feanaro 5y ago
      E2EE = end-to-end encryption Matrix = an open, federated messaging protocol suitable for replication of all kinds of structured data matrix-rust-sdk is a client SDK for writing Matrix clients, written in Rust.
• emodendroket 5y ago
  Ironically, the post used to come around several times a day.
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    Yep! From that exact perspective I went back and forth a lot trying to figure out whether Pony should support multiple deliveries a day. Ultimately I settled on one. I think the post used to deliver multiple times a day because instantaneous communication wasn't pervasive. Now that everything is instantaneous, I decided ultimately that one delivery a day would add more value to people's lives by offsetting all that instantaneity. It was a tough decision though...
• dangerwill 5y ago
  This is the first new app idea that has given me joy in at least a year :)
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    Thank you. That means so much. I've been working on this for a while.
• bschwindHN 5y ago
  The concept reminds me of my friend's service, Kermpany E-Mail: https://e-mail.kermpany.com/ https://e-mail.kermpany.com/
• andy0x2a 5y ago
  This is a really cool idea. I'm wondering what your approach to scalability is, as it seems like you're going to have large bursts of traffic every half hour ( with certain hours having much more traffic depending on demographics). If this messenger takes off, how are you going to deal with say for example all of India having their messages deliver all at once in the evening?
  • pbourke 5y ago
    With a bit of telemetry, you’d know in advance what your load is going to look like, allowing you to scale up or down resources (if you design the system that way)
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    Thank you! I've been wondering this too. It would be a great problem to have. As a sibling commenter writes, telemetry+selective scaling would probably be okay? Otherwise some other creative approaches like "pre-delivering" messages.
• cloogshicer 5y ago
  I really wish we had a unified messenger (that collects messages from Email, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, etc.) with this feature. Would be so amazing.
  • discardedrefuse 5y ago
    Matrix has bridges for a lot of other services. https://matrix.org/bridges/ https://matrix.org/bridges/ Some are in better states than others, and most will have trade-offs when it come to stickers and media. But definitely worth a look.
• tailspin2019 5y ago
  Looks really great but E2EE is important to me. Also this: > data is not encrypted at rest [0] I realise this is a one-person startup, but personally I would want more focus around privacy and security for a new messaging app. It’s going to be a key requirement for a lot of people I think. Being a one person startup, this is even more important, as the “company” behind this is likely not to have the same level of security measures that a larger company would have (I know this is an assumption but it’s a reasonable one). I absolutely love the concept and the execution so far looks great. We do need a messaging app like this! [0] https://www.ponymessenger.com/privacy https://www.ponymessenger.com/privacy
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    Thanks so much. Sorry for the slow reply! I'm sorry this doesn't have at-rest encryption, much-less E2EE. I totally understand. As I wrote elsewhere, the best I can do is be transparent about that. I'm a solid fullstack dev, but it would be dishonest to represent to people that I can cryptographically secure their information against a sophisticated adversary. I hope that Pony grows such that I can retain or hire a reputable expert who may be able to assist with that, so that I could market encryption in good faith.
    • tailspin2019 5y ago
      I get what you're saying, but it doesn't take much cryptographic know-how to at least enable encryption at the database level. Just something to think about... Good luck!
• hudvin 5y ago
  I was thinking about similar service for emails/news/forums/social networks. Main idea the same - slow updates.
  • discardedrefuse 5y ago
    For news and forum threads you might want to check out Fraidycat. Its a browser extension that handles your feeds (rss and some others). You can categorize feeds by importance (real-time, frequent, occasional, etc) and it updates the main page accordingly. https://fraidyc.at/ https://fraidyc.at/
    • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
      Fraidycat is really cool. I used it a bit. Have a twitter account already, but would probably have kept using fraidycat if I didn't have one.
• chiefalchemist 5y ago
  Very nice. Can each msg have it's own pickup / delivery time? For example, I might want Msg A to Person X be lunch-ish, but B to Y might be after work. An example scenario might be a personal trainer reminding X to eat and health lunch, but Y gets an after work nudge to go to the guy. Note: I realize such things could be self-reminders (read: TODO app) but there's sonething to be said for hearing from someone else and possibly being accountable to them as well.
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    Thanks a lot! > Can each msg have it's own pickup / delivery time? That would really get into the realm of things like Boomerang, of which many already exist. Pony is more like "email if it was actually electronic mail." The post person comes and delivers new things and picks up anything you're sending. I think microconfigurability adds a lot to cognitive load, which I am trying to minimize.
    • chiefalchemist 5y ago
      Understood. With that said, to your point about overload, I think it's worth considering the receiver (not only the sender). That is, for example, you want to mitigate my overload. (Thank you! :)) And I want to mitigate the strain on my receiver. Maybe that's still Boomerang? I'll have to check it out. My point is, our ideals are very similar when you take a step back. Thanks again.
• robotmay 5y ago
  I've had this idea knocking about for a while so it's really nice to see that I wasn't the only one who thought it might work. This looks like a nice implementation - I'm excited to give it a go!
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    That's great to hear. I take it as a good sign that other people are thinking about this as well. Would love to hear what you think.
• locallost 5y ago
  It's very smooth to use, or at least to onboard. Did not try to actually send a message yet, but will try soon. That brings me a bit to maybe my first issue: not really sure how to use it since nobody I know uses it yet. I'd be ok with some way of people to discover me, at least in this early stage where nobody is spamming :-). Also, if I get some people to try it, I'm pretty sure some will raise questions about the privacy of messages, who gets to read them etc. so you might want to look into that (yes, I know it applies to pretty much everything else also).
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    Thank you, that's really good to hear. > not really sure how to use it since nobody I know uses it yet. I'd be ok with some way of people to discover me Yeah I haven't been sure what to do about that except having people naturally invite other people and connect that way. What are other ways for people to discover each other? I'm reluctant to have people upload contacts, for example. > I'm pretty sure some will raise questions about the privacy of messages, Yes, adding at-rest encryption and exploring other options as well is a top priority.
    • procinct 5y ago
      Maybe give people a place to post a small bio of themselves on some sort of virtual pin board so users looking for a pen pal like relationship can get in contact?
• dbuxton 5y ago
  I did something a little similar to this with Apps Script to deliver my non-urgent email (everything except from a few approved senders) once in the morning and once in the evening. It's only a slight exaggeration to say that it has changed my life! If anyone is interested I'll dig out the code and share.
• yitchelle 5y ago
  Could you just turn off the notifications on your messenging apps? That is what I do for all messenging apps except for SMS. I would check them in my downtime in the evening.
  • jonny_eh 5y ago
    I tried that with FB Messenger, but forgot to check for months, missing important messages.
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    That's a great question—thank you for asking. In my view, turning off notifications (or using something like iOS 15's "Focus" feature), though superficially in the same sphere of concerns, is actually an orthogonal concern. The purpose of Pony not just to limit distractions, but to create a space that naturally keeps out transactional (security codes, shipping alerts) or low-effort (tweets, funny pictures) messages. These messages are usually time-sensitive and often fun and enjoyable, but they also have a tendency to bury messages you may need some time to think about. So while I enjoy getting links and pictures from friends, I've always wanted a space that's on a more "human" timescale—that is, a space that isn't instant but more attuned to our non-instant cognitive processes. Turning off notifications kinda, sorta gets you there, but not really.
• Daegalus 5y ago
  this is great, solid implementation and very similar to an idea I had floating around in my head. glad to see it live. while I don't have anyone to message yet, I plan to put this on my social media profiles as a contact point. any concerns about spam? I figure it won't be as bad as most services but I still for see people sending spam if it gets even moderately popular.
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    Thank you Deagalus, it's really encouraging to hear that other people had been thinking about this as well. I hope this implementation doesn't let you down! Please let me know what you think and how it can be improved. Definitely lots of concerns about spam. I've actually been soft launching this and have already had spam. And not just spam, but harassment, too. All the stuff that comes with an online community. After network effects, striking a good balance with moderation be a real challenge.
• criddell 5y ago
  This is really cool. What frameworks or technologies is this built on?
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    Thank you! And thanks for asking! I could go on about this forever :). I started working on this many years ago at this point trying to build the backend with Java/event sourcing[0] and the frontend as an SPA React app. I took the unfortunate/fortunate approach of building a webpage first[1]. I learned a lot from this experience and the result was something that worked okay but was terribly inflexible and difficult to work with. (The other problem was that it was an email service, but that's a whole other matter). I realized that if I wanted people to use this, I needed to have mobile apps and I needed to have a server-rendered frontend, at least the public facing pages. So for my second attempt (which is what you see here, a standalone messaging platform), I did the right thing and transitioned to Postgres/Hasura for the backend (with a NodeJS-based API that fills it out). On the front-end, for the web, I transitioned to NextJS which is wonderful. Eventually I transitioned entirely to TypeScript, and my stack if entirely typed from DB schema to UI. It's just great. I was able to do something like transition serial int identifiers to UUIDs in two hours without introducing a single bug anywhere in the stack. Since I had started with a webapp, I was able to build the mobile apps out of the same frontend codebase by wrapping the core of the webapp in an SPA that is delivered with Capacitor, which is also pretty excellent. Building a nice mobile experience with web technologies proved very difficult, but I think I did a pretty good job with it. But it is really, really nice having one, single codebase for the web and mobile. In addition to the tools I've already mentioned, I'd like to make a couple shoutouts to these indispensable libraries and the people behind them: - ProseMirror — a rich text editor. Thank you Marijn! - Framer Motion — an animation library for React. Thank you Matt! - Apollo Client — a JavaScript GraphQL client. Not as robust as Relay in some ways, but actually better in my opinion (having spent a lot of time with Relay). Thank you Ben and the entire team! (You can get a complete list of frontend libraries by clicking "Credits" in the footer on the homepage or in the menu inside the app.) Edit: I almost forgot: the backend is running on GKE. Kubernetes hosted by other people is a wonderful thing! This morning I woke up, ran: gcloud container clusters resize cluster1 --node-pool default-pool --num-nodes 3 Tweaked some resource requirements in my a couple YAML files, ran helm upgrade prod . And here we are! There was a post on here the other day about how the hermit developer is dead but that post was very wrong, and I am living proof :). One person can do so much in 2021 with all the tools we have. (That said, I would love to work with other people on this.) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28702975 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28702975 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18824993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18824993
• drodil 5y ago
  I wish there was such feature in Outlook. Any way to do a plugin for that with this idea? :)
• spoonjim 5y ago
  15 years ago I worked for a company that only delivered internal mail once an hour. Was a really good system that I’ve never seen anywhere else.
• NoGravitas 5y ago
  Alternative: share email over UUCP with your friends, only run uucico once a day. You can edit your outgoing mail spool until uucico picks it up! (For bonus modern security and convenience, use NNCP for this; possibly have packets delivered by an urchin with a thumb drive.)
• toshk 5y ago
  Awesome, problem is to convince everyone to use pony. Would be great to move this to for instance browser extensions for slack, gmail, and if techincally possible whatsapp. At least my sending can get scheduled. And maybe also autoresponders. Wont be exactly the same.
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    Yes, that will definitely be the big challenge. I don't think we will convince everyone. Not everyone wants or needs the type of interpersonal connection that Pony is designed to support. But I think that's okay: my bet is that enough people will appreciate having the Pony option to have made it worthwhile to have built. I wanted it anyway... :) This isn't meant to replace instant communication, but to augment instant communication. It will definitely take a lot of communicating and explaining and showing value to people who don't get it right away. And that's fine! That's what makes this a business endeavor :).
    • toshk 5y ago
      Love your enthusiasm :). Okay from a different angle. Im sure you have thought about this: My point was referring to the challenge of moving people away from their existing communication platforms. So I wrote down some quick ideas how to move your philosophy which many of us clearly appreciated to our current workflow. Convincing individuals to your product is something you are clearly succeeding in, but for many of us to convince our social circles to move your product won't be so easy to do. At least I, and maybe more of us would love this feature in Gmail or whatever e-mail client they are using.
      • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
        Thanks :). I am definitely enthusiastic. That's the only way. And for sure, it's hard to change behavior in general. It's been hard for me—and I made this product. Sometimes I send a message to someone and I'm like: "Why did I sent that instantly?" But I've been improving. For Pony to be successful at some kind of scale, there will need to be "influencers" (aka "leaders"?) who help makes this someone of a culturally relevant movement. Finding those people and getting them on board will be a big focus of my marketing effort. Would be interesting to see a Google implementation...
• jerjerjer 5y ago
  Good idea. Now just to persuade someone to use this too. Super happy you're offering a direct APK download. That's how all android apps should be available.
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    I'm so glad someone appreciates it :). It's an additional step in my release processes which is currently by hand (not sure how to automate it), but how could I not?
• keppy 5y ago
  In the past you would boast if your IM software was instant/fast. We all wanted real time everything if only to push the SOTA. But the results aren't ideal; we have slack overload, zoom fatigue, gmail addiction etc. I think there is a trend, now that fast is the baseline, where we will see more software that intentionally gives people space & time to think and reflect.
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    Isn't that interesting! It's like we all just take it for granted what "tech" means and something is not "tech" if it doesn't fit those parameters. For me it was some time around when Viber came out that I was like "wow, do we really need so many of the same messenger?" It makes sense because instantaneity was really revolutionary from a human historical perspective, but as you say, now that we have this baseline, I hope people become more receptive to exploring technology that's designed for usability and not technological novelty that isn't even novel anymore...
• r_singh 5y ago
  Cool concept, wonder which user segment would be passionate enough for the app to overcome the challenges posed by network effects...
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    It's interesting... I've spoken with a few avid users, and they just seem to be people who enjoy writing and thinking. Usually such "seed" users have gotten one or two other people on who also enjoy corresponding in this fashion, and it's worked out well for them. I frame he product as "mindful" because it's an well-applicable, widely-understood word, but to my surprise I've not had much traction with the mindfulness community in terms of people who actually use it. But my sample size should be bigger to really get a good feel for the demographics. And thank you :).
• abadger9 5y ago
  Nice work! I'm building a messenger as well which plays on time dynamics (differently) as side project, your UI is phenomenal. Happy to see a thoughtful take on messenger apps, imo the current model is (1) stale (2) 20-30 years old without any interesting innovations other than emojies/channel organization.
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    Thanks you! I worked on this for a long time and hearing that means a ton. > the current model is (1) stale (2) 20-30 years old without any interesting innovations other than emojies/channel organization. Yeah that's the most fascinating thing! Honestly I kept waiting for amounted to almost two decades for someone to build Pony before I built it. It never made sense that just because the medium of transmissions (the Internet) is instant, all applications built on top of that medium had to be instant, too! I mean, how many instant apps do we need? So I made Pony, because instantaneity is what really stood out to me as a factor that if modified could make a big difference in usability and experience. Would love to hear about the time dynamics you're working with if you can share.
• spanktheuser 5y ago
  I long for a corporate messaging service that incorporates deliberate scheduling. Being forced to choose specific business-wide delivery windows, alongside a /discouraged/ urgent option, feels as though it would go a long way to ameliorating the interrupt-driven messaging culture of most organizations.
  • mabub24 5y ago
    What client are you using for messaging/email? Not that I'm a huge fan of Outlook, but it has a "delayed delivery" option that schedules when the emails leave your outbox, and an "Urgent" option that highlights the email in the receiver's browser. I don't know if I would want those features in a messaging/chat app. The whole scheduling aspect seems to lend itself to the asynchronous aspects of email. Unless you tailor the notifications in your messaging app, everything is basically "urgent".
• ChandSethi 5y ago
  This is so wholesome. I like how these new types of tastes on traditional messaging keep showing up. Otherwise, all messaging apps are some packaging of chat bubbles, video/voice calls, and attaching files.
• mcbishop 5y ago
  My significant other is my only Telegram contact — used only for urgent stuff. We used email for non-urgent communication, but I didn't like having our one-on-one writing mixed with all the outside noise. We just switched to Pony for the non-urgent stuff. I anticipate her being my only Pony contact. Anyway, I'm stoked to have Pony. Thanks!
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    That's awesome to hear. It's truly an honor. I'd love to hear how it goes. Please don't hesitate to report any problems.
• leros 5y ago
  I love this idea. I don't practically know how I'd get others to use it though.
• divbzero 5y ago
  Are there email clients that group emails by sender in the same way that messaging clients do? I realized recently that an email client structured in this way could encourage long-form messaging similar to what Pony aims to do, though such an email client would still lack the once-a-day dynamic. Alternatively, Pony could maybe piggyback on email by providing an email address that proxies to each Pony account.
  • greggh 5y ago
    Spike does this. Spikenow dot com.
  • MajorSauce 5y ago
    Not exactly what you asked for (full email client), but DeltaChat is an email client disguised as an instant messaging app.
• thih9 5y ago
  I really like the idea; congrats on the launch! I noticed the In App Purchase names are "Massive", "Generous", "Enormous"; I think these are donations (based on your comment in this submission), but I wouldn't know that without visiting the HN thread. If they're donations, I'd change the In App Purchase names to something like "Donation: Massive", etc.
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  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    Thank you! Yes—the names are definitely a little... strange. They're artifacts from my first submission to the App Store when I didn't know how they would appear in the app description, and I've left them because getting into a groove with the Apple App Store took some time, and I didn't want to do anything to upset that. It's been a really interesting experience, though. The first Store review process was confusing and took a few days. But lately it's been quite smooth. This last version (2.1.7) was reviewed and accepted in under an hour. And in the middle of a weekday. If it stays this smooth, I might be inclined to try and rename the IAPs :).
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• wanderingmind 5y ago
  One suggestion from my side is to add a delivery at 12:00AM. This will help to create a unique long form communication on special occasion days (birthday, wedding day, graduation) that is not achievable in other messengers. This can be a unique value of Pony that can help with customer uptake.
  • floatingatoll 5y ago
    My mom wishes my happy birthday at 8am, not at 12am. YMMV, but 12am timed posts are a dead giveaway of robotic/impersonal. I also don't want my morning newspaper delivered at 12am at night, rather than 6am at morning. So I think that the constrained times chosen are appropriately selected.
• edpichler 5y ago
  Great project. I understood the reasoning about the problem he wants to solve. Brilliant. I hope it get traction.
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    Thank you Ed. It really means a lot.
• yumraj 5y ago
  Few thoughts/comments: - I like the overall idea and execution seems great. It's even free so you're reducing a lot of friction, great job. - My gut reaction is that except in very few settings, once a day delivery is going to be problematic. Perhaps a once an hour, or once every 2-3 hours delivery could be supported. Unfortunately that will defeat the entire purpose, so am not really sure. I guess you'll have to just wait and watch how it's being adopted and adjust if needed. - Not sure how the backend works, but if you're pooling all requests for delivery at the same time you will have very high peaks with mostly idle time in between. Am curious how you are adjusting for that? AWS Lambda?? - How about delivering the messages via email over SMTP, so that this becomes an email client and takes care of having person at the other end also having Pony. A lot of people may like reading/drafting emails at quiet times, periodically say every 2 hours. Again, this is not inline with the original intent of this, so not suggesting you change anything just something to keep in mind depending on the traction you get. All the best!!
  • floatingatoll 5y ago
    There is one setting where once a day delivery is beyond acceptable: Any time you would be willing to send a written letter by postal mail. For content of that nature, once a day is well beyond what's expected of the postal service. About the fastest you can exchange letters with someone by post is one week round trip, assuming a letter and a reply. It is also well-proven that humanity is able to maintain human connection and relationships using mailed postal letters, so once a day is certainly no barrier in that regard.
    • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
      > There is one setting where once a day delivery is beyond acceptable: Any time you would be willing to send a written letter by postal mail. Yep, that is a good heuristic! I think it could be generalized by saying that anything that isn't time-bound or time-sensitive (i.e. making plans) is fine for once-daily delivery. Everything that is time-sensitive or perhaps just quick and low-effort should be kept in the instant realm, because that's why the Internet got so huge in the first place. The only problem was that absolutely everything became instant and no non-instant ways to communicate online were left, thereby making it pretty hard to have correspondence like people used to correspond. Which is the problem Pony tries to address.
• elischleifer 5y ago
  As someone who lived with the pony express this brings back memories :) I like this micro-blogging distribution concept. It's like a micro substack distribution. As someone who generally abhors social networking, I like anything that has substance and limits spam.
  • elcomet 5y ago
    pony express disappeared in the 1860s...
• m1sta_ 5y ago
  App isn't working. I tried to login with Facebook and a new Xperia phone and it just went back to the login screen.
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    Thank you so much for reporting. Looks like Facebook revoked some permissions! No idea why. Please try logging in with another provider in the mean time.
    • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
      Upon further investigation it looks like both Facebook and Google auth on Android are not working—and for different, unrelated reasons. My sincerest apologies. It appears the underlying problem is the volume of traffic has tripped something at both of these providers. Google actually works, just incredibly slowly. Facebook says I need to submit the app for developer review—but I did that a while ago and when I go to https://developers.facebook.com https://developers.facebook.com it says I'm all set... I will try to figure out what's going on. If you're interested in the app, please create an account using a password—you'll be able to add Google/Facebook in "Settings" later.
• m1sta_ 5y ago
  Not working for new Facebook login via Android (Xperia 5ii)
• sflicht 5y ago
  I can't be the only one who thinks this idea is terrible. "What if we make the product worse, perhaps people will like it better?"
  • gaetgu 5y ago
    I somewhat agree. I also think that sometimes going backwards is exactly what people like. For instance, mechanical keyboards are pretty old and largely replaced, but so many people like them so much that they are willing to spend a lot of money on them.
    • sflicht 5y ago
      But they are also better. (Just more expensive and/or bulkier, i.e. their pros come with some associated cons.) Whereas delayed send / batch read only has "advantages" in the mind of the user, who could achieve them for himself or herself quite easily.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • mierz00 5y ago
    I strongly disagree with you. Since the beginning of Covid, my workplace has converted almost fully into remote working. For a lot of people this has been great, no commute, flexible working hours, ect. For me, it has been a living nightmare and I believe I have narrowed it down to one thing; the constant stream of messages that I am now getting. Everything is unfiltered, instant and arriving at all times. This has resulted in message fatigue where I am no longer able to connect with my friends. I feel that platforms like Pony work to eliminate that. Remove the anxiety from checking messages and add a structure that everyone can follow. I sincerely hope platforms like this become more popular.
• nikolay 5y ago
  This reminds me of ShortMail.com, but somewhat better. Congrats on the launch! Let us know how we can get verified (like you)!
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    Thanks you nikolay. The verification process is to be determined. I just wanted to make sure there was a method to distinguish "official" communication at launch. Not sure how useful, but we'll see :).
    • nikolay 5y ago
      I like it and I'm gonna use it! Thank you for making it clean and simple! Not sure why people dared to compare it to the hard to grasp even for me Slowly app!
• rekoros 5y ago
  Very nice! Many years ago I lived in a house without a phone - the only meaningful way to communicate with faraway friends was sending and receiving paper letters via post. In many ways, that cadence was a great way to maintain relationships over many years, with minimal mental overhead. Maybe Pony should send/receive messages once a week/month, instead of daily :-)
  • glenneroo 5y ago
    You might enjoy https://www.futureme.org https://www.futureme.org (there are others as well I see, but I think they were the first). I've used it with a few friends and myself over the last ~15 years - usually in 1-5 year increments. Whenever I receive an email, I make sure to type out a response over the next few days and send it off to be received in x years. It has always been a nice surprise receiving a "diary" entry from myself in the past, especially when I make note of current affairs... particularly in the future, past problems always seem so insignificant... and it's always surprising how often many of my plans were completely thwarted. edit: pro-tip: type it out using your favorite editor in case your browser crashes or something!
    • rekoros 5y ago
      Interesting! I guess this can now be done with Gmail/Superhuman/Boomerang "send later" feature as well.
      • glenneroo 5y ago
        Nice, I never even knew that existed with gmail! Probably because I never use gmail's native interface. Won't the messages always show up in gmail's draft folder though? That would eliminate a big part of the surprise ;) I particularly like that FutureMe is a service solely dedicated to the task of sending an email in 1/3/5 years. I'm guessing infra-costs are pretty low - the site hasn't changed much in 15 years i.e. I would hope they can continue running long into the future, whereas some of these other services are at the whims (gmail excluded) of survival against a multitude of competing services and being able to continue running long into the future. A lot changes in 5 years - it feels like a lot of services from 15 years ago don't even exist anymore. Oh and a nice bonus for some people - you can allow your emails to be shown publicly (and anonymously ;)
• charles_f 5y ago
  Love the idea, I'm so annoyed by receiving train of thoughts over 10 messages, their corresponding notifications and a 15m timespan.
• godot 5y ago
  The idea/term of "Outbox" really reminds me of email of the old days (in the 90s) where you have a desktop email client (e.g. Eudora, or Internet Mail and News, or even earlier versions of Outlook Express) that don't do auto-sends, and only connect to your POP3/SMTP servers when you click Send and Receive. This was probably due to internet being on dial-up and being billed by the minutes was common so users limited their internet time (e.g. disconnect from internet if writing a long email response, etc.). I have a lot of nostalgia from those days vs the always-on culture now. I like that you were able to spot this particular usage pattern as something to narrow in on for your product. I don't know if this would catch on as a trend (for example, like ephemeral messaging did when Snap came out), but I wish you all the best!
  • mro_name 5y ago
    your nick hints you fancy waiting. I like that. But humans are herd animals after all and long to keep in touch with the herd. All the time. Like the borg. Even more so, if addiction is exploitable. You hear me, facebok. Indeed 1x day may be much healthier, but prbly too adult to catch.
    • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
      You're totally right and tapping into the herd dynamic is really the only way to get substantial movement to happen with anything. That's why culture and society is so focused on leadership, right? My hope is that I will be able to get "influencer"-type people to help lead the way. Without that, people will continue moving in their current direction. But with leaders, I think adoption of anything is possible.
      • mro_name 5y ago
        > so focused on leadership, right? indeed, and repetition as a lever of the leaders. Repetition makes people believe anything plus forgetting it's a belief. If you hear 'mooo' all day long, you better behave like a cow. You'll be treated like one anyway. That's nothing to think about. Mental firmware does that.
    • 5y ago
• mistik956 5y ago
  Ok I get it now.
• Waterluvian 5y ago
  I’m not sure I could rewire myself to do this but I love the idea. I wake up in the morning and read my postcards from friends. Write a few during the day. They get “mailed” out that night. I just need to find some friends who don’t just want to chat all day. Is there potential for a bridge between worlds? I’m on WhatsApp with a bunch of friends. One of which will read our entire group thread once per day and provide an itemized single message response paragraphs long. I love her style. But the problem is that WhatsApp is complete junk for long form.
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    > I’m not sure I could rewire myself to do this but I love the idea. Like anything behavior-related, it takes some time and effort. I created this because I've wanted this going on two decades, have used it for the better part of 6 months, and I still sometimes send things to on text/chat/email that could have been sent by Pony. But I do it less and less and it's been rewarding. > Is there potential for a bridge between worlds? I'm not sure... I am looking forward to hearing about people's experiences and what they think. > One of which will read our entire group thread once per day and provide an itemized single message response paragraphs long. I love her style. But the problem is that WhatsApp is complete junk for long form. She may be your go-to candidate for trying this out! I've found that people who successfully adopt Pony have at least one person who's willing to try it with them. I was even thinking of making that a prerequisite for signing up, a gimmick of sorts, that you need to sign up with someone else. My experience has also been that all these platforms—WhatsApp, email, chat (obviously)—aren't great for long form. Stuff just gets lost and buried before you respond to it, and the UIs aren't built for that. If you know someone who seems interested in that sort of communication, you might want to try it with them! Would love to know how it goes.
  • Cyphase 5y ago
    As an aside, do you know if your friend is replying like that on WhatsApp mobile, or WhatsApp Web on a larger screen?
    • Waterluvian 5y ago
• allenu 5y ago
  Very cool idea! I love the idea of a "pony express" kind of daily pickup. It's very easy to grok the idea. In some ways, it reminds me of back in the day with BBSes and FidoNet long-distance mail distribution happening early in the morning to avoid high long-distance charges. Did you play around with different frequencies for distribution? I've always thought it would be great if the messaging we used at work could be delivered just once every hour or every half hour. It might reduce the distraction of constant emails or messages.
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    Thanks a lot! Yeah, people seem to be comparing it to FIDO, which is really cool. I haven't played with different frequencies at all, but I really want to. Do you have anything in mind?
• jasfi 5y ago
  Pony seems to try and capture something lost by sending physical post. This can technically be done with email, but the mindset is different.
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    I am really glad you think so! That is pretty much the goal.
• pictur 5y ago
  The website is really impressive.
  • dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    Thank you pictur!
• pacmanche 5y ago
  I love the idea. Small thing that irks me. The app icon looks too much like a unicorn. A stocky little Pony would be so much nicer and true to the name.
• m9731526 5y ago
  There is a social app of similar idea called Slowly. The time cost for "letters" to be delivered depends on the distance between personal selected location.