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That's a perfectly valid workflow, but it would certainly be nice for people who do want a unified workflow to be able to have that option.

by kibwen 3y ago

DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
Such an app/service would not work towards the interests of message recipients - but the message senders. Those interests are not aligned.
- mtlynch 3y ago
  Why are they not aligned? If I send someone a text and they receive it in their email inbox because that's their preference, what difference does it make to me as the sender?
  - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
    When you send an SMS text message, there's a understanding (and therefore, an expectation) that it goes directly to the recipient's phone/smartwatch and that they can reply immediately; i.e.: it's a system for high-priority (and therefore highly-intrusive) communications - this is why people generally don't give-out their mobile-phone number to strangers. Unless you go to the effort to tell people that you route your SMS messages to e-mail and therefore reply in-your-own-time (hours/days/weeks delay), the people trying to contact you aren't going to expect that: they're going to expect you to reply much sooner. I'd be out of a job if my boss' panicked SMS messages about how our prod website is down went to email instead of my phone. ------------- Any kind of "universal" messaging platform that anyone can use to send anyone a message needs to allow recipients to set how maximially intrusive those messages are - but senders might also want a way to set how minimally intrusive those messages are. Those requirements cannot be easily reconciled in a way that protects privacy and prevents abuse while also allowing anonymous and unsolicited messages or senders. So far the "best" way to do that today is by segregating senders (not recipients) by system (e.g. private SMS for high-intrusive; less-private-but-guarded e-mail for low-intrusive; public social-media, etc). Consider services that tried to work-around that, such as LinkedIn's paid messaging feature - which didn't exactly go very well.
gnicholas 3y ago
For sure. I just wonder who these people are and how large the market is, since none of my friends/family are in it. It's possible this is much more popular on Android, or outside the US (perhaps because they use WhatsApp more than iPhone-using Americans). But if this is the case, I wonder how much they will be able to charge, since Android users are less monetizable than iPhone users, and the US has a good chunk of the highly-monetizable mobile audience. For me, my unified workflow is my phone, which I have tuned to receive notifications from various platforms in various different ways (push, pull, manual). Even if I could tune Beeper to do the same, I would prefer not to have to duplicate my effort in setting preferences, which I've already set at the OS level.

That's a perfectly valid workflow, but it would certainly be nice for people who do want a unified workflow to be able to have that option.

by kibwen 3y ago

That's a perfectly valid workflow, but it would certainly be nice for people who do want a unified workflow to be able to have that option.

DaiPlusPlus 3y ago

Such an app/service would not work towards the interests of message recipients - but the message senders. Those interests are not aligned.

mtlynch 3y ago
Why are they not aligned? If I send someone a text and they receive it in their email inbox because that's their preference, what difference does it make to me as the sender?
- DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
  When you send an SMS text message, there's a understanding (and therefore, an expectation) that it goes directly to the recipient's phone/smartwatch and that they can reply immediately; i.e.: it's a system for high-priority (and therefore highly-intrusive) communications - this is why people generally don't give-out their mobile-phone number to strangers. Unless you go to the effort to tell people that you route your SMS messages to e-mail and therefore reply in-your-own-time (hours/days/weeks delay), the people trying to contact you aren't going to expect that: they're going to expect you to reply much sooner. I'd be out of a job if my boss' panicked SMS messages about how our prod website is down went to email instead of my phone. ------------- Any kind of "universal" messaging platform that anyone can use to send anyone a message needs to allow recipients to set how maximially intrusive those messages are - but senders might also want a way to set how minimally intrusive those messages are. Those requirements cannot be easily reconciled in a way that protects privacy and prevents abuse while also allowing anonymous and unsolicited messages or senders. So far the "best" way to do that today is by segregating senders (not recipients) by system (e.g. private SMS for high-intrusive; less-private-but-guarded e-mail for low-intrusive; public social-media, etc). Consider services that tried to work-around that, such as LinkedIn's paid messaging feature - which didn't exactly go very well.

gnicholas 3y ago

For sure. I just wonder who these people are and how large the market is, since none of my friends/family are in it. It's possible this is much more popular on Android, or outside the US (perhaps because they use WhatsApp more than iPhone-using Americans). But if this is the case, I wonder how much they will be able to charge, since Android users are less monetizable than iPhone users, and the US has a good chunk of the highly-monetizable mobile audience. For me, my unified workflow is my phone, which I have tuned to receive notifications from various platforms in various different ways (push, pull, manual). Even if I could tune Beeper to do the same, I would prefer not to have to duplicate my effort in setting preferences, which I've already set at the OS level.