[colechristensen]

My mom sends me videos of the cat via email all the time. My level of 'cool' is such that this is the extent to which people send me videos, but a video of a cat watching Netflix on my mother's iPad isn't any different than rollerblading hijinks: email would work great for either and wouldn't involve a third party trying to extract billions of dollars from this simple exchange.

I get it that the emailing a video workflow might not be that great, but all that's missing is a good app for it. You don't need an expensive middleman trying to squeeze profits out of simple communication (Facebook, twitter, snapchat, SMS, etc) when entirely free alternatives exist and have fundamentally better foundations.

E-mail sucks because you _can't_ funnel huge profits out of it, so it hasn't gotten much attention. There is a real and huge opportunity for making communication better without trying to vendor-lock your users into ad-laden privacy hell, but it hasn't quite been done yet.

I have ideas, but I don't yet have the resources or motivation to move on it and might never. I hope somebody does though, because I'm tired of dealing with the middle-men in personal communication and afraid of the potential for abuse of power many of them have.