Let's make email great again - my alternative idea for a Steem App/Utility
Introduction
Apologies for posting more than my normal maximum of once per day but I have been inspired by a post that was made today on the future of Steem/Steemit and I am too excited to sit on this:
The @steemitblog account posted on how we should encourage competing websites and appications for Steem utilisation. The post is here.
I think this is a great idea.
The more applications we have utilising Steem the greater the utility and the better it is for all of us who have invested in Steem.
I can envision a whole universe of applications and websites built upon the Steem ecosystem. With that in mind I have my own idea:
The Basic Idea - a Steem based e-mail platform
Whilst I use instant messaging services a lot there is still a place for e-mail when I want to write longer messages that don't require immediate response.
I find it offers a less personal and more formal means of communication that is more similar to old fashioned snail mail.
Why? - the simple answer is spam control
The main issue that makes me hate using regular email is spam and no spam filter is 100% accurate.
The simple fear of missing out on an important piece of communication makes me hesitant to employ anything but the most basic filtering systems and even then they are not always effective.
A certain amount of time must be dedicated to looking for false positives and a significant amount of spam gets through anyway.
A blockchain based mail platform can set a charge for sending mail. This can be small enough (e.g. one cent) that a legitimate user will not really need to worry about the cost. For someone who wants to send large amounts of spam the cost becomes prohibitive.
This creates a powerful economic incentive against spamming that could potentially kill one of the major disadvantages of email communication - i.e. spam.
Are there any other components to the idea?
I think the central idea is the most important one as a clutter free email without spam is something I know many people have been crying out for.
It is something that is very valuable because it would save me and others (particularly those who are time poor) the very valuable and limited commodity of time.
That said there are other potential ways of building on it:
For example there is a lot of what I see as pseudo-spam - promotional content from shops and services that I subscribed to and rarely read but never bother unsubscribing to.
What if you could be paid in Steem for reading this content?
You could even potentially set a minimum threshold amount for companies to pay you to receive their emails.
Companies could then compete for your email attention assuming you wanted that.
It would be entirely up to you.
Steem could also be earned like loyalty points when you partake in special offers.
Mitigation against gaming
These kind of features would require some controls to prevent gaming of the system and this could be mitigated against by making a rule that each mail account must power up a certain amount of Steem before being active.
It doesn't need to be much - just a sufficient level that it is low enough to not be a big barrier for people who wish to use the system but not so low as to make it cost effective to game the system.
These are just quick examples and obviously there are a multitude of ways of using this that I probably haven't even thought of.
Why am I posting this here and not just making it
I have had this idea for a cryptocurrency application for some time but I don't have the coding skills to implement it. Ideas are the easy part. You also need the skills to implement them and I don't.
Ordinarily that would be the end of it, however, I know we have very capable individuals in the community who could do it.
To be honest I'm surprised it hasn't been done already. I'm sure people will have thought of this before but have been hampered by the costs in setting up microtransactions using regular currrencies. It just woudn't wouldn't be workable with regular money.
Blockchain based technologies like Steem allow us a means of getting around these kind of barriers.
That is why I am surprised not to have encountered any cryptocurrency based solutions for this yet.
This is a product I would love to have as an end user and I think it is an idea that a lot of others would appreciate. I would even be happy to pay a monthly subscription to use it (as long as it wasn't too high).
I am therefore submitting this idea to the Steemit community under the "ideasfactory" tag.
You don't need to pay me anything - I just want to be able to use this:)
The usual disclaimer
I'll apologise in advance for any fatal flaws or problems with this idea.
What do you think? Would you like a service or application like this? Would you use it?
Thank you for reading.
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Charge people for sending mail? What are you, the Post Office?
Ha! Just kidding. Interesting idea though.
Lol. Yes the actual idea is the same. It should reduce spam though:)
According to the amount of e-mails I am receiving everyday, the spam is actually a negligible amount. But then what about my private e-mail address? I don't use any (except for registering on websites). So for people like me, I am fine with using my direct message inboxes on various platforms (facebook, skype, vidyo, etc)
That's great but I think there are still a lot of people who do use email for other things. I think it is down to personal preference. For certain things I just prefer email over DM.
True. The fact I have shut down all e-private mail addresses is only due to the too much time spent with e-mails due to my job. I prefer more real contacts for the private part, if you see what I mean. This is probably very uncommon at the moment (hopefully this will evolve).
Yes. I understand. I think it depends on how you network with people. For friends and family I do use DM but for more formal stuff I use email, also if I want to send longer posts I still use email.
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Thank you:)
This sounds like a good idea and helpful even to contact regular posters on Steemit. We kind of have the ability to contact through messages attached to payments but formalizing it in some type of email system would be nice.
Other people have talked about the ability to require making small payments to send emails as a way to cut down on unwelcome email.
I think it would be great to have a Steemit email address that could be posted publicly without the fear of it become a giant spam bucket like so many other publicly posted email addresses.
That's why I'm surprised nobody has done it yet. I used to hear about things like this in the 2000s before cryptocurrency but nobody was able to do it because of the financial hurdles. Blockchains make it so much easier to do so like I said it is odd that we don't have it yet.
I'd use it and actually check my inbox.
Exactly right? There are some days I just can't face looking at my inbox due to all the spam and crap that is in there!
I might jump on this ideafactory tag, there is one idea that's been bugging me since i joined steemit but i don't have the know how to accomplish, I'd love to work with our developers and crowdfund it.
You should. Even if nobody does anything now the idea will be preserved on the blockchain forever - maybe someone will see it or find it at a later date and do something with it. Or you could get useful feedback. It is worth trying and putting it out there. I think there are a lot of ideas that just get wasted because people don't know what to do with them. Modern technology gives the potential to connecting the ideas with the people who have the technical abilities to put them into practice.