Comment by dmitryminkovsky | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dmitryminkovsky | Hacker News Reader

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dmitryminkovsky

> A text conversation is never really over.

And in some ways it never really gets started. I love texting. I love the ability to send little pings to people throughout the day. To share moments, etc. But at the same time, the complete proliferation of instant communication has left us with no place to have anything but the most base-level communication.

> We try to negotiate the same kind of turn taking, but many of the cues we use to gauge whether a conversation is going well—or even just still going—are missing. That can be stressful.

> as anyone who’s ever sent a vulnerable text knows, it can be jarring to put a message out into the world and get nothing back, leaving a message hanging in a void until the next time the conversation picks up.

These lines and many others like it in this post are exactly why I created Pony [0]. Pony is a non-instant email platform that sends and receives messages once a day. Ever since my first communication online, the stressful and often difficult-to-navigate rhythms of instant, always-on contact made me wish there was a non-instant online medium so I could correspond without with some space to reflect and think.

[0]: https://www.pony.gg

Look at this guys profile. He keeps spamming his service. This is poor taste dude.

I looked at his profile and I don’t find his posts that out of place. Yes he plugged his product a few times but it was always somehow connected to the topic and added value.

You copy pasting “He’s a spammer, look at his profile” to all his old comments 2h ago feels more like a spammer and is just childish.

I am talking about my service but I think it's unique and clearly relevant to the conversation. That it's on multiple on threads is because this topic is so prevalent right now. I'm trying to make a positive impact on people's lives by offering the type of communication platform no other company has ever been willing to try. Cheers!

No, you are jumping on threads one after the other to promote your product. This is going to backfire on you if you keep doing it.

You shouldn’t comment multiple times in a post promoting your thread. Once is fine.

Absolutely. That was an error. I thought I deleted one, then left the other. By the time I noticed both were up, it was too late to delete. I apologize for that. I am new here. Was having some trouble earlier as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19498218. I really respect this community and do not seek to offend.

Because of your tasteless marketing tactics I guarantee you I will never use your product.

So your app that you’re advertising is just email without notifications? I fail to see the relevance to the discussion. You can turn off notifications to sms or instant message services too.

> You can turn off notifications to sms or instant message services too.

That's absolutely right, but then you can turn them right back on again. That's the factor that makes all the difference. With Pony there's no way to turn those notifications on and off, so you don't have to regulate yourself.

This doesn't sound like it has a lot of utility, I'm sorry to say. Weird thought to build something on the premise of "people don't have enough self control to not check their email more than once a day, so we will make sure they check it EXACTLY once a day!"

Correct. That’s right, except you can set up a notification to receive an email if you received a pickup/delivery that day. You get at most one such alert per day, and only if you get something. I should make that clearer.

I have absolutely no idea what your experience is, but like... the one friend I’ve kept in touch with over the years, we communicate almost entirely over text (IRC) and meet up a handful of times a year. Your first paragraph here isn’t one of universal fact, it’s one of your own personal experience.

You're right. I didn't mean to make it sound universal, because it's not.

What I meant to say is that even though you can keep up on IRC and other instant media, the fact that they are instant often drives you to communicate reactively, instead of reflectively. Does that make more sense? Sure, you can be asynchronous if you don't look at your messages or regulate yourself so you have time to process before you reply. But I think no matter what, the instantaneity drives us to be reactive, even the most mindful among us.

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