Inbox hell

EDIT: Right now testing Franz – could this be it!? Has that Austrian guy figured out how to do this? I will get back to you!

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The strongest religious idea of our time is that the market will solve every problem, as long as there is a strong enough demand for a solution.

I will give you a simple example of why that simply isn’t true. And I guarantee that you will both recognize the problem, and agree with my frustration.

Let me just ask this simple question: How many inboxes do you have?

I have Facebook Messenger, the Instagram direct messages, my work email, my private email, my other private email, the Twitter direct messages, the LinkedIn inbox, my WhatsApp and my Signal apps, the Wordfeud direct messages for cryin’ out loud, and my personal trainer who every so often tries to motivate or threaten me through that humiliation app that I am paying dearly for. So… that’s eleven then.

Eleven inboxes. This is obviously insane. So what do I want? Just a couple of things:

I want to remove the private message function all together on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. And Wordfeud. But – no can do. Not on any of those services is that a user option.

Then, I want a golden app, with a connected web interface that I would like to look and work much like Gmail, where all of my different messages end up. 

When I reply from there, it needs to look like I am replying through the service that sent me the message. When I delete from there, it needs to be deleted all the way to the source.

And… that’s it. That’s all I am asking. Technically, this is not difficult. It could be built in a month.

Wouldn’t you love it? Of course you would. But you can’t have it.

”More user control”, they say. They all promise that, yet they mean nothing. Their actions prove it.

Not a single one of these platforms will open up to help us getting a better service. Not if that better service increases the risk of us being less dependent on them.

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