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I have no idea (didn't find out from a quick browse through the site), but the first thing that came to mind was an image in the mail, pointing to a server that slowly trickles a response without ever finishing so it can measure how long the other end is listening.

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I guess that could work if mail clients don't have timeouts for images.

I still can't imagine how they would detect deletion though.

They're just calling "viewed for <x seconds" a deletion, it seems...

A timeout would possibly be after an engagement time that means "probably read the whole thing", e.g. 60 seconds.

Pretty genius idea but easy to replicate by the big boys..

Big boys move slowly. Plus, what isn't "easy to replicate?" aside from network effects.

I worked at an ESP (Email Service Provider) a few years back. It may not be anymore, but it was a crazy environment back then of everyone trying to compete.

The major issue with this is going to be scaling it, with large ESP's doing 50-100 million messages a day, and 20-30% of those being opened, that's a lot of processes. This solution will probably be effective, mostly because it's going to a much smaller segment.

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