Messaging service “Shortmail” seeks to bridge the gap between Twitter and e-mail, by making e-mail simpler.
This was the driving idea behind the project according to 410 Labs CEO David Troy. With Shortmail, users have to communicate concisely and efficiently since they only have 500 characters to work on. Aside from limiting the messages, Shortmail will also bounce-back too-long messages, telling the senders to keep it brief.
Troy said he was looking at making e-mail better and a natural direction to take was the limitation of the characters.
“People have become familiar with Twitter and SMS,” he said. He has thus provided all Twitter users with an account who can head on to Shotmail’s site to claim their Twitterhandle@shortmail.com addresses.
410 Labs said Shortmail now has 25,000 users.
Once the user has adjusted his brain to the character limit, he will find Shortmail a breeze to use as it allows the effortless importing of contacts from Twitter and Google.
Shortmail has also inked a partnership with Sparrow, the no-frills email service from Mac, which will provide users with a character count to keep the Shortmail messages in line.
Critics however question Troy’s contention that email problems spring from length because senders can just send several shorter messages instead of one long message.
“We find that’s not how it works,” Troy said. “When people hear that the length is restricted, they tend to choose better words, fewer words…You see that with Twitter and what not; there’s no reason to think that pithy conciseness is limited to one platform.”
Troy said Shortmail message are more conversational and lead to more message from real people by cutting down on marketing messages. It also has a built-in protection against spammers.
“One thing we want to do is to tie back into some notion of identity,” Troy said. “Some people don’t like the notion of a public e-mail address because they’re concerned about spam. But convert any Twitter username into an e-mail address — a fundamentally a public e-mail address — and then you have a public forum”
Aside from having a public e-mail, there is also an option to make the conversations public too, making it a real bridge between e-mail and the larger world
“We think there’s a lot of value there. Nobody’s doing that,” he said.
Shortmail: A new approach to e-mail
Messaging service “Shortmail” seeks to bridge the gap between Twitter and e-mail, by making e-mail simpler.
This was the driving idea behind the project according to 410 Labs CEO David Troy. With Shortmail, users have to communicate concisely and efficiently since they only have 500 characters to work on. Aside from limiting the messages, Shortmail will also bounce-back too-long messages, telling the senders to keep it brief.
Troy said he was looking at making e-mail better and a natural direction to take was the limitation of the characters.
“People have become familiar with Twitter and SMS,” he said. He has thus provided all Twitter users with an account who can head on to Shotmail’s site to claim their Twitterhandle@shortmail.com addresses.
410 Labs said Shortmail now has 25,000 users.
Once the user has adjusted his brain to the character limit, he will find Shortmail a breeze to use as it allows the effortless importing of contacts from Twitter and Google.
Shortmail has also inked a partnership with Sparrow, the no-frills email service from Mac, which will provide users with a character count to keep the Shortmail messages in line.
Critics however question Troy’s contention that email problems spring from length because senders can just send several shorter messages instead of one long message.
“We find that’s not how it works,” Troy said. “When people hear that the length is restricted, they tend to choose better words, fewer words…You see that with Twitter and what not; there’s no reason to think that pithy conciseness is limited to one platform.”
Troy said Shortmail message are more conversational and lead to more message from real people by cutting down on marketing messages. It also has a built-in protection against spammers.
“One thing we want to do is to tie back into some notion of identity,” Troy said. “Some people don’t like the notion of a public e-mail address because they’re concerned about spam. But convert any Twitter username into an e-mail address — a fundamentally a public e-mail address — and then you have a public forum”
Aside from having a public e-mail, there is also an option to make the conversations public too, making it a real bridge between e-mail and the larger world
“We think there’s a lot of value there. Nobody’s doing that,” he said.
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