[raindrift]

I agree, email is sort of a morass of old, incompatible clients and aging protocols. They need work, but the installed base is huge, so it's a hard problem. The solution is probably to build a layer on top of all that to simplify it, much like jQuery did with incompatible DOM implementations.

So far, a number of companies are doing well with abstracting the protocol layer away to make focusing on building good apps easier (see mailgun.com for SMTP, context.io for IMAP, etc).

As to Threadable's long-term strategy, it goes further. :) Right now, we're building a great mailing list. As it gets further along, we plan to make it into a platform so that other app developers can use us to do all the difficult parts of managing threaded discussions, client compatibility, etc. The idea is to turn every app and website's isolated comment stream into a threaded email discussion, so people can engage using the tools they're already used to.

There's already millions upon millions of mailing lists out there, but nobody's made major changes in this space in a decade or more. We think we can add enough value that people will be happy to pay for it, and make group email collaboration more popular at the same time.

Our overall goal is the engagement and inclusivity that comes from making key information available in the way that people expect. Team collaboration tools only work well when the whole team uses them. The mailing list is just the best way to get there.