The unmet demand may be closer to 10,000 a day for "high volume communication" and knowledge workers because there is a "shadow backlog" caused by the poor performance of the current approach. There are a couple of different categories of interaction:
I don't want to lose a key e-mail from someone new (e.g. a prospect) or someone I want to reconnect with (e.g. an old friend) in the midst of everything else
I want to have some answers suggested based on a collection of blog posts, a FAQ, or some other knowledge repository.
I want to recombine a number of e-mails into a complex branching thread because that's a work flow that a team I am a member of embraces (see http://www.43folders.com/2008/03/12/patterns-email-conversat... ) so that I have the full context for the conversation.
I want to make sure I don't lose touch with folks I have had a prior shared success with (I would like to boost my effective dunbar number).
There are several others. Please feel free to contact me directly if you would like to continue the conversation. I think this is one area that is overdue for a significant change in paradigm, the evidence that the current approach isn't scaling can be found in a variety of secondary and tertiary coping behaviors that we have come to accept without attacking the root cause. I think there will be many approaches that continue to use SMTP as a transport protocol but enhance the user interface with embedded analytics and automation, as well as adding alternative forms of response to include blogging, wikis, IM, and VoIP.
I don't want to lose a key e-mail from someone new (e.g. a prospect) or someone I want to reconnect with (e.g. an old friend) in the midst of everything else
I want to have some answers suggested based on a collection of blog posts, a FAQ, or some other knowledge repository.
I want to recombine a number of e-mails into a complex branching thread because that's a work flow that a team I am a member of embraces (see http://www.43folders.com/2008/03/12/patterns-email-conversat... ) so that I have the full context for the conversation.
I want to make sure I don't lose touch with folks I have had a prior shared success with (I would like to boost my effective dunbar number).
There are several others. Please feel free to contact me directly if you would like to continue the conversation. I think this is one area that is overdue for a significant change in paradigm, the evidence that the current approach isn't scaling can be found in a variety of secondary and tertiary coping behaviors that we have come to accept without attacking the root cause. I think there will be many approaches that continue to use SMTP as a transport protocol but enhance the user interface with embedded analytics and automation, as well as adding alternative forms of response to include blogging, wikis, IM, and VoIP.
see also http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=143878