Comment by tammer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tammer | Hacker News Reader

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I think this is valid and needed but I often wonder if we over-focus on the open web as the alternative over the other biggest widespread open technology in the world: email.

I go to a lot of art & music performances. Lately, and particularly for the last few events I’ve attended, the performer emphasized joining their (MailChimp-managed) mailing list, because they didn’t want to seem uncool by promoting Facebook.

I don’t know exactly what it looks like, but I strongly suspect the social graph that disrupts Facebook gets built on email, somehow. Something like MailChimp, but without the direct marketing/conventional newsletter expectation baggage and a focus on message consumers as well as producers.

The advantages of “push” style communication, flexibility in styling messages, and potential for advertising all seem to me like a revolution waiting to happen. The openness of email, combined with the fact that everyone has one (even millennials!) are icing.

I just hosted a small house concert last night for about 20 people; the age range was 18-50, I reckon. I put out a sheet of paper with spaces for names & contact info, for folks who wanted to be notified for future shows, and intentionally left the contact method open -- I figured if they wanted a group text, or a FB msg, I could do that.

I was surprised to find that every person who signed up wrote their email address.

So you may just might be right.

Granted, this is a rural area (West Virginia, US) and there's far less incessant use of smartphones and the like. So my experience might not apply to more urban places.

I have no idea how I'd give you my 'facebook address' - you'd look me up, but it might be private, or you might find the other one of me with my same name, or... I dunno. Problems.

If you send them an email with your FB page in it, a certain % will follow then, because it's a way to get some more passive updates when they want.

EDIT: 30 years ago, everyone would have given you a street mailing address, even though some possibly had faxes or may have wanted a phone call or to be paged when you had updates.

It seems pretty likely that the first person who signed up wrote their email address, and everyone else saw it and assumed that space was for email addresses.

Well what this looks like is Google Groups, or a startup like groups.io.

I maintain an email networking group over at CTOLunches.com, and email is the only channel I allow. Several people have asked about Slack, but email is the tried & true async medium that won't be going away ever.

For a social network, I see it being a cross between a Google Group and a newsletter.

* List my profile somewhere with a sign up box to "subscribe to updates and conversation from Miles and his network." * Every 3-6 weeks, I receive an email from the platform asking me what's been up with me, and I simply reply, which then gets sent to people who subscribed from updates from me. * Calendar integration -- when I add an event to my calendar, I have the option of including it in my next update to my email network to let them know I'm doing it. (ex: I'm speaking next month at some conference) * Community participation -- if anyone who subscribes to my email updates/network wants to email my network (ex: do you know anyone who...), I get an email saying my subscriber Bob wants to ask my network a connection, would you like to include it in your next email update to your network? If I respond yes, then it is also listed in my next email update to my network.

Something like that would be awesome.

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