4 ms·

Federation didn't drive people to GMail. A modern interface and someone building on top of the protocol did.

by kodah 4y ago

pwinnski 4y ago
My point wasn't that people fled federated email to congregate at gmail. My point was that most people don't care one wet slap about federation, and will happily use whatever people point as easily usable (and free), whether Hotmail, or Yahoo, or Gmail.
oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
IIRC, what really drove people to Gmail was the huge storage space. Finally, no more having to manage your own quota, no more dealing with bounced email, etc. I think that's a far easier sell than 'modern interface', although I'm not sure what the equivalent for Mastodon users would be — maybe simply "it's free" if Twitter becomes a paid service.
- sockaddr 4y ago
  Yup. I think the alternatives at the time were things like Hotmail offering a whopping 4MB.
- derbOac 4y ago
  My reason for Gmail was pretty simple: it was free and free from the constraints of a work email account, and reasonably trustworthy. People aren't annoyed by federation. They just want something reliable, trustworthy, that connects them to content and people, and costs as little as possible. Twitter gained ascendance for the same reason: it gave everyone a free personal RSS feed. The formula is simple: make it possible to have your own personal X for free (where X is some widely used but technically challenging or costly tool) and it will take off.
  - oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
    > People aren't annoyed by federation. I would go even further: people don't want to think about federation, for the most part. It doesn't matter whether I use Gmail, my company work email, or my own local email server; if I send an email to somebody, they'll receive it, regardless of what they're using. All I need is their email address. A federated microblog needs to be just as accessible, imo — if I have to adapt my behaviour based on whether somebody is on the same server as me, that's a problem.

Federation didn't drive people to GMail. A modern interface and someone building on top of the protocol did.

by kodah 4y ago

Federation didn't drive people to GMail. A modern interface and someone building on top of the protocol did.

My point wasn't that people fled federated email to congregate at gmail. My point was that most people don't care one wet slap about federation, and will happily use whatever people point as easily usable (and free), whether Hotmail, or Yahoo, or Gmail.

oneeyedpigeon 4y ago

IIRC, what really drove people to Gmail was the huge storage space. Finally, no more having to manage your own quota, no more dealing with bounced email, etc. I think that's a far easier sell than 'modern interface', although I'm not sure what the equivalent for Mastodon users would be — maybe simply "it's free" if Twitter becomes a paid service.

sockaddr 4y ago
Yup. I think the alternatives at the time were things like Hotmail offering a whopping 4MB.
derbOac 4y ago
My reason for Gmail was pretty simple: it was free and free from the constraints of a work email account, and reasonably trustworthy. People aren't annoyed by federation. They just want something reliable, trustworthy, that connects them to content and people, and costs as little as possible. Twitter gained ascendance for the same reason: it gave everyone a free personal RSS feed. The formula is simple: make it possible to have your own personal X for free (where X is some widely used but technically challenging or costly tool) and it will take off.
- oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
  > People aren't annoyed by federation. I would go even further: people don't want to think about federation, for the most part. It doesn't matter whether I use Gmail, my company work email, or my own local email server; if I send an email to somebody, they'll receive it, regardless of what they're using. All I need is their email address. A federated microblog needs to be just as accessible, imo — if I have to adapt my behaviour based on whether somebody is on the same server as me, that's a problem.