Mozilla officially launched its new Thunderbird focuses spinoff Mozilla Messaging yesterday with David Ascher as CEO. Mozilla Messenging begins with the proposition that e-mail is broken, with its goal being to fix it.
Writes Ascher:
Email and other forms of internet communications present us with a paradox. The stunning proportion of our days spent communicating online clearly indicates that as a society, we are more intricately connected via the internet than ever before….Yet as the number of such interactions grows, and as the number of ways in which we interact grows, the joy that communication can bring is too often replaced by frustration, confusion, or stress.
One common short-hand for the above is to say, somewhat flippantly, that “email is broken”.
….we see our primary role as that of facilitating collaborative approaches to problem solving and incremental progress, through a combination of leadership and facilitation work. This is an unusual approach, and it can be chaotic and slow. But it seems to have worked well for Firefox and the web, and I believe it can work well for Thundebird and email.
It’s a noble cause that starts with a solid email product that has struggled for attention next to the shining beacon of Firefox. We’ll certainly be watching to see what they come up with.
(via IW)
Email is certainly broken because of the email spams, which Mozilla Messaging is unlikely able to fix anyway.
A technology is only broken when the creator stops innovating their creation for the changing times. I don’t think e-mail is broken, just misused. People use e-mail for the wrong reasons, and hope e-mail will bend for their own uses. For example, ‘facilitating collaboration’ was never e-mail’s focus or objective. Rather then bend e-mails uses, why not create a program totally different…a technology that is created for the purpose of ‘facilitating collaboration’.
Boring Market, what reasons (apart from spam) do you think are the wrong reasons?
Perhaps Skype and its ilk are replacing e-mail for business.
“EMAIL shall henceforth be known as EFAIL” – Tantek Çelik
http://twitter....tuses/724032562
Seems like email will always be broken if you don’t have conversations… I can’t believe Google is the only one to do it.
Cool thats a real nice move to say.
http://tech.gobooks.co.in
Richard Brennan, one of e-mails main strengths is that we already got a lot of applications being able to handle, store, catalog and manipulate the “format”. It’s very popular to think that skype or other IM are going to take over emails in business, but until it becomes very easy to archive, catalog, journalize and track IM messages across users it will never get serious business tracking.
IM in business is more like a phone. You can “talk” over it and agree to something, but it most cases it’s hard to make a final agreement in a message/phonecall, without a written agreement. You can use log-files and the like to catalog your agreements and look up what was decided, but the serious tools for integrating this into business calendars, workflows, CRM-systems and the like are still lacking compared to the last 10 years of work that have been put into e-mail-tech.
There are business versions of IM-servers and the like coming and they maybe have a shot in the future, but as of today I think it’s too early to declare e-mail dead and overtaken by IM. From my point of view they both serve different purposes and communication situations.
/just my 2 cents
I’m very fond of Thunderbird and have been using it since the beginning on my Mac and PC. There certainly is a lot of room for improvement, especially in the search sector.
I use Thunderbird because of Outlooks shitty IMAP functionalities.
I agree that it’s not email that’s broken but our ways of using it. I’m an “Inbox 0″ fanatic now and use a combination of Remember the Milk and Backpack to serve those functions I inefficiently used my 100+ Inbox system for: to-do lists and current project archive.
If Thunderbird is going to reinvent things it needs to find ways of encouraging users to change behavior. Gmail did this with it’s archives and assurances that we didn’t need to spend half our lives sorting old emails into folders. If Thunderbird could figure out how to make Inbox 0 mainstream and if it could figure out how to integrate to-do systems it might live up to these promises.
This may be too late for me. I was a longtime Thunderbird user until it destroyed about six months of recent emails last year. I responded by having my Gmail account pick up backup copies via POP. This made me start looking more carefully at Gmail and I’m hooked. I love that it allows me to stay on top of email on multiple machines and extensions like RTM for Gmail and Better Gmail2 mean I can construct the interface I’d like. If Gmail could make these sorts of extensions mainstream then Thunderbird would be in trouble…
Geesh. This is just a site to market their overshadowed email client. With a snappy catch phrase of email being “broken”.
E-mail is not broken, nor is Instant Messaging, they just need to evolve. E-mail 2.0 and I.M. 2.0, anyone? I recommend checking ISS (Instant Syndicating Standards), that combines features from both e-mail and instant messaging. As for a basis for Mozilla Messaging, I recommend Sameplace, an I.M. application for Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird that has recently won the Extend Firefox 2 award.
So email is broken and we’re going to fix it with more email?
It’s easy to agree it’s broken. But my sense is different messaging systems can/will replace email.
For example, with Twitter, I’m connected to the people I want to be connected to. The text box only allows for 140 characters so I can’t blab forever and I don’t have to address my “email” since I’m already connected to everyone I need to. Plus I can still address private messages to people when I need to but the open communication is valuable for my network.
Do I think Twitter is the answer to email? No. But it’s a direction. And a step change which is what we’ll need to do to get out of the 1-to-1 communication, babbling b.s., and attachment hell that keeps us working blind.
If Thunderbird is going to reinvent things it needs to find ways of encouraging users to change behavior. Gmail did this with it’s archives and assurances that we didn’t need to spend half our lives sorting old emails into folders. If Thunderbird could figure out how to make Inbox 0 mainstream and if it could figure out how to integrate to-do systems it might live up to these promises.
Typo on the second sentence: Mozilla Messenging, unless you’re trying to a coin a phrase, Duncan.
It’s the 13th comment for a reason
The capabilities of the Thunderbird email client are quite basic now, which could actually turn out to be an advantage as they work on more advanced capabilities and integration with other messaging mediums. Without a bunch of baggage to deal with, they can perhaps go down some more elegant paths than bloated existing apps have to attempt. More thoughts here: http://www.emai...la-messagi.html
> Mozilla Messaging Thinks Email Is Broken
They probably mean that Thunderbird Is Broken, which is very true. It is hardly usable with a volume of 50-100 emails per day. They really expect the user to click on each mail folder and select “Compact This Folder” every few days, because it’s the ONLY way to purge delete messages from the folder’s disk file … and it’s just a random example out of many.
I really wish there was an alternative to Outlook, which is nowhere close to being bug-free itself, but there isn’t.
Try this and see what you think. http://www.motionnotes.com
email isnt broken. it does what its designed to do. is my tv broken for not cooking my steak?
@15 Tools -> Options -> Network & Disk Space -> “Compact folders when it will save over ___ kb”
Quote:
….we see our primary role as that of facilitating collaborative approaches to problem solving and incremental progress, through a combination of leadership and facilitation work.
In other words we have no f*** idea what is our role, but we will use a lot of Business language to make it look like we do. Note that he used facilitate twice.
Haven’t they heard of Gmail?
Gmail is UNBE-FREAKING-LEAVABLE! Its incredible! The best! AWESOME and AMAZING.
And I’m no where close to their biggest fans.
I use thunderbird daily and am very happy with it.
Gmail is decent, but the biggest problem is that I have multiple email accounts and though Gmail allows you to check them, when you send email there’s that “on behalf of…” line.
So far I haven’t seen any web-based email that lets you send out via different emails/identities.
@Dyde – If that website isnt Dilbert material I dont know what is.