building email apps

Building Email Apps

AJAXWorldOctober 20, 2008San Jose, CA

Andy DenmarkTripIt, Co-Founder and VP Engineering

Email Bankruptcy

“I routinely declare email bankruptcy and simply delete my entire inbox.”

- Michael Arrington, TechCrunch“Wondering if I can get a Bear Sterns bailout for my email bankruptcy.”

- willpate on Twitter

“(He) just declared email bankruptcy. I've read those declarations enough to know it means our email tools aren't usable.”

- garrickvanburen on Twitter

So, why is email still around despite all the challenges and criticism… ?

Email Is Still The “Killer App”

Email is a natural extension of a metaphor for communication that humans have used forever

Everyone has email and is the overwhelming majority of person-to-person online communication

No matter what else people use to communicate, they use email too

Email contains an amazing amount of context and data about our lives Our relationships Our purchases Our thoughts and the thoughts of people we know

What More Can We Do With Email?

Spam and mass email marketing may be contributing to the problems outlined earlier

But think of all the things we can do to make our applications better by making better use of email: Broadcasting data Query interfaces Data transfer Intelligent parsing of data

Mining of social connections (“Inbox 2.0”) Email as an application platform

Does An Email App Make Sense?

PROS Ubiquity – everyone has

email Exposure – email is on all day

and captures a lot of attention

Simplicity – easy to send email, everyone knows how to do it

Embedded identity

CONS May just not fit your service May be too complex for your

users to understand It’s challenging to properly

support all email clients, versions and formats

Building and supporting a system that sends, receives, and reads email is a pain

Prehistoric Email Apps

Domain Registration Email Sign-Up Email to:

[email protected] From address

authentication for new sign-ups

Choose to receive your bill via email or USPS

Authentication schemes for modify/delete were CRYPT-PW and PGP

Archie File Query Email InterfaceAvailable Interfaces Text-based client Graphical client Telnet client Email

Browsing The Web Via Email

“For personal reasons, I do not browse the web from my computer. (I also have no net connection much of the time.) To look at page I send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me. It is very efficient use of my time, but it is slow in real time.”

-- Richard Stallman (2007-12-15)

About TripIt

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***CONFIDENTIAL*** 13

Forward Any Confirmation

Email

Automated Online Master

Itinerary

Automated Weather, Maps,

Guides…

Trip Sharing & Social Alerts

iCal & Atom Support

Email & Mobile Access

Add Meetings, Activities,

Restaurants, etc.

Why Email Made Sense For TripIt

The native format of travel data is varied and unfriendly

The travel industry isn’t moving to expose that data Partnering with big travel companies and building

APIs would take too long Users already have all their travel data in email, but

that data is “dead” Auto-account creation using the embedded identity

of an email message It has become an “instant delight” factor for users

Types Of Email App Services

Command Line Interface

DataTransfer

SemanticParsingBroadcast

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DataTransfer


One Way

• User requests email information to be sent to them

• Typically triggered by an action or an alert

Examples

• Mailing Lists

• Google Alerts

Example: Mailing Lists

Searchable knowledge base built as a by-product of natural human communication

Example: Google Alerts “Real time” alerts

delivered right to my desktop

Useful way to asynchronously broadcast data I’ve requested as it’s available

With linkage to the web, alerts are actionable and controllable



DataTransfer


CLI

• Users emails a command and Email App replies with a response

• Typically a standard list of commands and responses

Examples

• I Want Sandy

• TripIt

Example: I Want Sandy

http://iwantsandy.com/

Example: TripIt



DataTransfer

SemanticParsing

Email Forwarding

• Users forward emails and Email App recognizes and parses them

• Typically converts “unstructured” data into “structured” data making it more usable to the app and user

Examples

• Flickr

• Blogger

Broadcast

Example: Flickr

Example: Blogger



DataTransfer


Intelligent Agent

• Structured data from email is enriched by the Email App by retrieving related information from other sites

• Typically leverages “keys” such as geo-coding to capture relevant data

Examples

• TrackMyShipments

• TripIt

Example: TrackMyShipments

Example: TripIt

Timezone

Online Checkin Flight Status Seat Advice

Flight DetailsWeather



DataTransfer

SemanticParsing

Email Forwarding

• Users forward emails and Email App recognizes and parses them

• Typically converts “unstructured” data into “structured” data making it more usable to the app and user

Broadcast

CLI

• Users emails a command and Email App replies with a response

• Typically a standard list of commands and responses

One Way

• User requests email information to be sent to them

• Typically triggered by an action or an alert

Intelligent Agent

• Structured data from email is enriched by the Email App by retrieving related information from other sites

• Typically leverages “keys” such as geo-coding to capture relevant data

ExamplesListserv Google Alerts

ExamplesI Want SandyTripIt

ExamplesFlickrBlogger

ExamplesTrackMyShipmentsTripIt

Email Systems as Platforms

Why turn an email system into a platform for running applications? Natural personal productivity integration point with other tools such

as calendar, contact list, etc… All the data is already there Done right, the UI is a natural extension of what hundreds of millions

of people use everyday, small learning curve Examples

Outlook/Xobni GMail w/ GreaseMonkey GMail Labs Yahoo! Open Mail

Outlook/Xobni

Search your Inbox People-focused analytics and

semantic analysis (e.g., phone numbers)

Implicit social graph discovery (i.e., who talks to whom?)

Related conversations http://www.xobni.com/

TripIt for GMail

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25778

Drives the UI to “forward” the emailNo access to the data in the message (e.g. headers, attachments, etc…)“Brittle” solution that relies on a UI that doesn’t changeNo feedback loop or error handling with TripIt’s backend

GMail Labs Features on top of GMail, no

mashups yet Not available to non-

Googlers Huge un-fufilled potential

Yahoo! Mail

Video: Yahoo! OpenMail/TripIt Integration

Key Takeaways

Email is not dead! Treasure-trove of data waiting to be mined

At least four different types of apps Broadcast, CLI, Data transfer, Semantic parsing

Emerging email platforms New ways of delivering your applications via mail platforms are

coming

If you get it right, huge payoff for you and your users

Questions

Andy DenmarkTripIt, Co-Founder and VP Engineering