HEY remaking email - why did nobody think of this?
E-Mail has been around forever. Ray Tomlinson sent the first e-mail in 1971.
After reading through the main features of HEY.com on their landing page, I wondered why nobody before them came up with this idea ? These features seem super logical, like they should have been around for ages...
What do you think?
I would argue many people have. Hey is built on the enormous pile of bodies that is email improvement. But, most competitors have built email apps that let you keep your email address. Hey is one of the few like gmail, outlook, yahoo, protonmail, that have decided to force users to get a new email address and to not support imap. It's bold, but I don't know that their features require users to change their actual address.
It just creates lock in, so I understand why they wanted to do it that way, but I don't quite understand the benefit to the end user over so many other tools that improve inbox management. I say this as someone who loves Jason and DHH and has learned a lot from their philosophy running their business, so I'm sure my skepticism is just wrong.