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Wasn't there a startup recently that pivoted from being a mail client into building a generalized API for interfacing with mail services like gmail/yahoo/outloo
by tinco 12y ago
Wasn't there a startup recently that pivoted from being a mail client into building a generalized API for interfacing with mail services like gmail/yahoo/outlook? I forgot the name but I'm super interested in efforts like this.
I have the feeling the next big social network disruption is going to be leveraging e-mail in a big way. E-mail is the established quasi-p2p (it's a network of centralized services) platform that everyone has an account and a very complete social network on. I'm not saying it would be easy to launch a Facebook competitor from e-mail, but I believe it's still got the potential to launch one last social network and someone just has to do it.
I'm hoping the key lies somewhere in building the right sort of mail client, that's got the reliability and extent of e-mail, adding on top some hook feature and layering in perhaps a dash of privacy, cryptography and independence. There's got to be something viral in there.
- aroch 12y agoInbox (MIT and Dropbox): http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/07/mit-and-dropbox-alums-launch-inbox-a-next-generation-email-platform/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/07/mit-and-dropbox-alums-launc... https://www.inboxapp.com/ https://www.inboxapp.com/
- grinich 12y agoWe didn't pivot. ;)
- username223 12y agoIMHO the big outstanding problems with email are spam and the difficulty of using public-key cryptography (both key distribution and mail client support). Write a dead-sexy mail client that makes the crypto completely invisible and uses either a public key directory or some kind of OAuth-ish thing, and you'd solve the latter. Better, if you made finding someone's public key take time and/or money, and simply refused to deliver unsigned mail, you'd take a big step toward killing spam.
- jmnicolas 12y agoIf only they could make encrypted emails as transparent as encrypted SMS like Textsecure ...