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Ask HN: What do you want most from webmail?

5 points by starter ↗ HN
Webmail has been the same old for too long. What do you wish your web mail had?

Even better spam filters? Absolutely no ads?

And, are you already happy with what you can do with IMAP across all of your devices?

14 comments

[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 182 ms ] thread
apas
I love Gmail's filters.

Labels/folders, no ads would be awesome, IMAP (and Push) is exceptional.

I'd like to see everyone implementing Gmail's "conversation" layout but not taking it to other level—making email look like chat, that is.

Plus, I'd like the feature to export all of my emails from one account whether it's Gmail or Yahoo, etc.

starter
This is good. You like Gmail. What one better feature would entice you to leave Gmail. Only no ads?
glimcat
Gmail has ads?

Enticing the average HN reader and enticing the average Gmail user are two different problems.

And it already has great spam filtering and minimally-intrusive ads that people have learned to ignore.

starter
I know, you are right. My mission isn't to revolutionize email itself but to revolutionize how people message people online. Not by email. By messaging.

Email only sites like Gmail probably won't last in a world where a high percentage of your contacts are on your social network of choice. I want to be that social network and I want to offer a better way for people to message each other.

glimcat
Communication is a deeper problem than email. It's not something you will single-handedly solve, but there is a lot of room to do good work in this area.

"I want to be that social network" - if that's your sole strategy, you're screwed. You need to start smaller than that.

Build a tool which lets users do more for less effort and it will be easy for them to adopt. Worry about penetration from there.

starter
More for less effort. Got it.
apas
Sincerely, I don't think I could ever leave Gmail -- given, at least, its current competitors.
starter
You have a point. Gmail is good.
vipivip
upvote/downvote emails.
starter
Sounds like a really intriguing idea but why? What exactly do you want that up voting to do for you?

It could be a way to ensure that emails from contacts with higher votes are prioritized. Is that it?

staunch
Gmail was a huge step forward from Hotmail/Yahoo. People went from 4MB storage ad-riddled sluggishness to massive storage AJAX interface awesomeness.

Unless you have ideas that are as big as that you probably shouldn't bother stepping into the ring. The product quality bar is very high and so is the lock-in for email (Yahoo/Hotmail are still bigger than Gmail).

starter
Yahoo/Hotmail are still bigger? Thanks for the eye-openers. I'm passionate about helping people communicate more easily so if I discover a way to make email more efficient for my generation, I'll step into the ring!
russjhammond
Batch delivery, except for urgent messages. I like to get my email like my snail mail, all at once.