Subversion Email: What does the next generation email look like?

Subversion of email is a distant dream.

Emails that accompanied us for too many years. We have always been dissatisfied with it, complaining that it is not human nature, information overload, inefficient, but it does not leave it. Pessimistic, to improve the e-mail, it seems that after all, "not good enough" and "God, this is still an e-mail" two endings. But "instead of email" is a huge gold mine on the treasure map of Paul Graham, a famous American programmer and venture capitalist, and no matter how hard the road is, we never lack a brave man.

Changes in the nature of emails that are inherently subversive seem too difficult, so the brave are crowding the other way. By the rise of mobile terminals, the already fading mail client has made a comeback with a variety of coats.

When it comes to email, we can think of a lot of things to improve: The interactive way to send and receive emails, spam filtering, inbox sorting, email search, sorting ... Perhaps since the birth of the mail, countless people have been trying to improve these basic functions, but the products committed to this is either mediocre or short-lived. Sparrow brought a better user experience, but did not wait to support all the mailboxes even the product with the team (of course, mainly the team) sold to Google; Fluent, who had just received attention, announced the death with its stunning interface and ambitious ambitions. With short lives, they present some possibilities for future emails to limited users.

The world is changing so fast that the basic functions of email are not enough to satisfy us, and more and more people are trying to combine it with another product. Many people believe that email is inherently inseparable from mission management, so we are lined up to use each email as a mailbox of tasks, others pay more attention to the trend of socialization, and the list of contacts in the mailbox and social networking sites is a natural pair, so Smartr Contacts, which automatically collates contact lists based on mailboxes and social networking sites, also has rapportive to add more information to your mailbox contacts.

Of course, if you think mail, task management and socialization, there is no less than one, there are Tobias Van Schneider. Mail fits your expectations, but it's still just a concept + a few exquisite design drawings. As a conspiracy theorist, I don't believe that these designs will one day turn into a product, even if it turns from a graph to a line of code, and it's not as ambitious as fluent.

In addition, we have been neglected by the third direction: retro. Just got 100,000 dollars angel investment bubbles, for us to bring the general feeling of handwritten letters. We can write, draw, sign, photograph, arrange, choose a comfortable background color and send it as a PDF attachment.

After seeing the introduction of bubbles, I immediately and very disdain to associate with the important application on the tablet: blackboard. Write and draw out, I can do it with the blackboard, okay! Want to draw a little better, with pen good, with monitors good! But, out of a strong curiosity about 100,000 dollars, I have carefully watched the demo video, registered the account.

The conclusion of the earnest trial is: compared with the blackboard pen monitors, Bubbles really has a kind of retro feeling of handwritten letters. Write a love letter, to the mother use Ah, tease children ah, all good. But (yes, you guessed right, there will be one after the compliment), it's really a very immature and unreliable product.

First say the platform, see Mailbox When I think, this thing should why not the Web version? When I saw Sparrow, I was wondering why it wasn't a web version. Bubbles completely eliminates my desire for Web version application: Graffiti hand-painted things made of web version, support computers and tablets do not support the mobile phone, on the tablet has not a serious application, is to make what Ah! Use the mouse to write and paint too masochistic, touch-screen pc before bubbles and computer is no fate; On the tablet, I am too lazy to open the browser and open a Web page, on the phone ... Oh yes, they don't support mobile phones ... Again, the address, this has been a lot of people spit, but I saw it at the moment still want to sigh: How to look like spam Ah Pro ~ plus the attachment in PDF format, but also a perfect phishing mail configuration.

Having said so much, I just want to say one thing: no matter from which point of view, Bubbles is not a good email product, at least not yet. It may grow into a niche communication platform, a affiliate of a social networking site, or even an independent social networking site. But subversive emails?

Subversion of email is a distant dream. To improve the basic functions of email, and the original letter of task management, social networking, imitation handwriting + graffiti, these three directions, especially the task management that was mentioned by Paul Graham, have and will continue to have countless people. 10 years later, 20 years later, what will our emails look like? We'll know after 20 years.