Yes, I wonder why it hasn't taken off. Perhaps lack of word of mouth, or the fact that it's lacking the "paid" component.
I would feel bad about telling people to email me at shortmail.com, but a VC who receives tons of unsolicited pitches wouldn't. Some would love charging a fee to get pitched over email. If it takes 30 seconds and they pay you 20 bucks, why not.
I love the concept and I've been trying to use it for over a year now. I see two issues:
1. No native Android application.
They try to sell themselves as a replacement for both SMS and email combined, which would be great, but if I'm limited to IMAP, there's no way it can replace email.
2. Yet another email address.
Sometimes someone does need to send me a long email, and I do need to read it. The process needs to be possible but mildly painful (to discourage them from doing it). Quarantining/bouncing the email (their current solutions) aren't quite right. But they're on the right track.
However, I'm holding out hopes for one reason: they're implementing this as an open protocol - ie, within the extant email headers, so the functionality isn't limited to Shortmail-hosted email.
Probably because that landing page doesn't tell me much about how it works. It's "limited to 500 characters"... for the sender? What happens if it's more than 500 characters or has an attachment? Or wait, is this a walled garden thing? I can't tell.
So I check the "Why shortmail" page (which 99% of visitors will not do), and I'm still not sure what happens if incoming e-mails are longer than 500 chars.
The sender gets a notification that you only receive messaged shorter than 500 characters, and you have the option to forward larger messaged to another email address.
My point (probably didn't make that clear) is that might be a reason it's not more popular - because it's not really obvious how it's supposed to work.
I would feel bad about telling people to email me at shortmail.com, but a VC who receives tons of unsolicited pitches wouldn't. Some would love charging a fee to get pitched over email. If it takes 30 seconds and they pay you 20 bucks, why not.