Why build our company on a protocol technology that predates the Internet?

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:51:00 -0700

First email was sent between these cool looking computers. Photo: Dan Murphy, http://www.opost.com/dlm/

Email was originally designed for one-to-one messaging. Since the first use of the “@” sign in 1971, email and its uses have evolved significantly. Today the Internet is always on and email is ubiquitous. You can access email on any device, on any platform, pretty much anywhere in the world. Each of us uses email a little differently, we back up and share files, save pictures, manage tasks, use it as a to-do list, send ourselves reminders as well as things to read and watch later, and the list goes on.

Your email address is your personal digital identification. As consumers, email is how businesses communicate with us. Think of all the transactional, promotional and notification emails you get on a daily basis. Think of how you end up in your LinkedIn account. It is likely you got there by clicking on a link in your email. Your inbox has simply become the command center of your personal and professional life.

In the corporate world, “work” almost exclusively consists of extracting information from email, processing it, and putting it back into email. Think about the workflow in your company; how you receive, process and share information. Email is not part of our daily workflow, it is the workflow.

Complaints about high email volume and occasional attempts to replace email are natural consequences of email’s simplicity and its inevitable growth. You will hear users declaring email bankruptcies, companies trying to ban email completely, and products being launched to replace email.

At InboxFever we embrace the simplicity of email. We love the fact that there are more than 3 billion email users around the world and the user interface is the same for each and every one of them. With InboxFever you can transform an email address into an application. Email powered applications increase the productivity of your employees and allow you to better serve your customers and partners.

We think email is an underutilized, massive data delivery platform and that’s why we are building our company on this protocol technology. We are very excited to be enabling developers and businesses to build practical, cross-platform, device independent, “in-workflow” applications with unprecedented global reach. Try InboxFever Email App API and let us know what you think.