A VC - Latest Comments in If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

Re: If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

Michael — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 11:13:48 -0000

It shouldn't be difficult to do. An AutoDM would be published almost immediately after you Followed a user. It wouldn't be hard to create an addon that compared your Follow to a DM, and filter out any that were sent within seconds of yours.

Re: If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

fredwilson — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:09:13 -0000

Great idea.

Re: If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

fredwilson — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:07:11 -0000

That's where I got to recently, particularly the part about feeling bad

Re: If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

Sara F. — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:06:53 -0000

Catching all emails is difficult. As a small business owner, this blog post makes me realize my monthly newsletters and promotions may end up in the deleted file also! So I began a search to find what makes people open emails and I came across this web site that has a bunch of information about internet and email marketing. I suggest anyone who is a small business owner check it out. It has helped me! http://www.wbsonline.com/re...

Re: If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

Kartik Agaram — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:43:45 -0000

An idea whose time has come.
http://akkartik.name/blog/2...

Re: If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

patmcgraw — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 08:32:09 -0000

My hope is that the news finds me after someone else has solved the issue...and some day I hope to realize that dream. :) Until then, I scan what I can and respond to those that seem most important. I refuse to spend too much time trying to stay on top of the never ending flow and I refuse to feel bad about it.

Re: If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

fredwilson — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 08:28:09 -0000

I've switched to gmail and I am waiting for google to give me an alternate way to sort my inbox called relevance (and/or importance). They see what and who I reply to, who I write to and how often. I can't believe they haven't done this yet

Re: If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

matthew — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 02:08:01 -0000

I am not taking this approach. More of finding the messages, I use stumble upon and twitter. Have to look for what is important, otherwise I will not find it.

Re: If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

GiordanoBC — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:49:20 -0000

One of the best channel for trusted direct communication, IMHO, is Twitter's DM, since only people I follow can send me one. Naturally it has the limitation of 140 chars, which doesn't allow for particularly articulate messages, but it can be used in combination with an email, to make the recipient aware of it, or a link to a longer message can be sent through it.

In fact, since this is one of the few channels that allows only people I'm genuinely interested in to message me, an idea would be for Twitter to enable email clients to use it as a filter: the client would recognize that an email is from a person I follow on Twitter and mark it as important, or even send me a DM notification on Twitter itself. In fact, the latter could be developed as an indipendent Outlook plug-in. Anyone wants to do it? :)

Re: If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

obxerve — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:41:58 -0000

Point well taken. Interestingly, maybe we can draw a distinction between the message and the medium. Importance is a variable of the message. Email (or social networking platform or disqus) is the medium. You're using social networking platform or disqus as some sort of alternative medium to email.

What about email add on that enables users to better manage or assign importance to the messages that arrive in the inbox? Gabor Cselle (ex-xobni) is working on reBoxed and reMail.

I have not personally used either; my inbox is not that bad, so I never thought that they would add value to me. But for someone like Fred, it may hit a sweet spot. Looking at what reBoxed and reMail are supposed to do, technically it is feasible to combine both plus personalised "importance" filter rules so that the inbox content is always prioritised.

It may work.

Re: If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

Michael Altschul — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:10:08 -0000

Amen to that. We agree on the goal, differ on timing and means perhaps.

What I'm saying is that there are bottlenecks of communication that will prevent us fully disengaging from old school sources, like email, to achieve our goal. Mainstream adoption of new forms of communications will, like any technology, take time. It will also require a better solution IMO, likely something that can help transition the non-early adopters. Until we invest the time and resources to convert these bottlenecks to our preferred communications platforms, we're stuck with the old.

Re: If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

Mark Essel — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:31:05 -0000

There are some grammatical accidents but the authors point was worth looking at (I'm more guilty than most in that dept). I'm trying to get my head around how almost.at defines the events in an automated fashion, either people are registering them online somewhere, or he's got some pretty amazing semantic tool that can identify events from other trending keywords/hashtags.

Re: If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

fredwilson — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 10:53:16 -0000

I'll check all of this out. Thanks mark

Re: If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

fredwilson — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 10:49:12 -0000

They don't call me. They email me. Then we meet face to face and talk

I hate the phone

Re: If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

fredwilson — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 10:24:08 -0000

I don't think so. We have to get away from email and engage in places like this instead

Re: If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

fredwilson — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 10:24:07 -0000

But maybe the most important message for me will come from someone who most people would think is the least important

That's why I don't want to spend my life in an email driven world

Social media helps me find those people more easily

Re: If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

Mark Essel — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 06:33:55 -0000

In the interest of this post title, this may interest you.
You'll appreciate this post Fred ("Given the odds, is taking venture capital the best way to get rich?")
http://www.jacksonfish.com/...

His sources for profit data:
http://theonda.org/articles...
http://royal.pingdom.com/20...

also if you are interested in real time event tracking (not keyword tracking, big difference) check out http://almost.at/

Re: If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

mr fred follower — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 02:13:35 -0000

you dont answer the phone when a portfolio ceo calls you??????????????? oh thats right you are too busy blogging and being a twit, oops i mean tweeting mr fred, oops i mean mr all important.

Re: If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

Michael Altschul — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:10:39 -0000

I tweeted a related challenge a few weeks ago: "Anyone able to keep up w/ work email, perso email, FB, RSS, Twitter, WSJ, NYT? & have social life? & actually work? Pray tell" Add to the mix: blog comments, phone, SMS, vmail. In short, we live in a world saturated with information and we struggle to keep up with it all.

Fred, you propose a solution: let the important stuff find you and let the critical stuff (from family) know how to find you (BBM). Which is fine...for you. I would argue that if *you're important enough*, the important stuff will come to you.

For the other 99% of the world, we have to adjust to situations and the preferences of those around us. Until someone (Google? GC + Wave?) can integrate this mess, employers and older family members will be dictating my communications for the foreseeable future.

Re: If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

obxerve — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:36:46 -0000

Yes of course, I am the centre of the universe and thus messages that are important to _me_ will find me. Maybe. The challenge is, "important" is subjective and consequential.

If I am not that important, then messages that are important to _me_ may not find me at all. (Obviously, importance is rated differently in different contexts. I may be important in one "circle" and otherwise in another.) People don't care if I get the message or not, since I am not that important. The more important I am, the higher the chance are that other people care to enable messages that I deem important to find me.

Ironically, the more important I am, more and more people will try to do just that. Which consequently leads us to the dilemma that Fred was facing in the first place: a deluge of messages that other people deem important for Fred, but Fred actually does not care about.

How to prioritise is an interesting read, if you have a couple of minutes.

Re: If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

Pete Warden — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:33:06 -0000

I think that's fantastic, I'm just saddened that you're forced to trade-off the random serendipity of email.

Re: If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

Pavan — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:12:41 -0000

and to ask the man not be selfish would be in our selfish interest; which is kind of hypocritical..

Re: If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

Pavan — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:10:21 -0000

I agree with you Fred. I have a philosophical note to add:

There was and always is a lot of information in the world; it's just that it is much easier to find today. And why does one require all this information; basically to use this information to do what he likes and be happy at the end of the day. Once you figure that out it is not imperative to stay on top of everything and know everything. And yes, if it is important it will surely find you; as a colleague of mine once said, "If the email is important, they will send it again."

Re: If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

fredwilson — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:38:40 -0000

That's why I am no longer going to try to read every message but instead put myself out there ever more in contexts where I can meet that special person can change the world

Re: If The Message Is Important, It Will Find Me

fredwilson — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:38:36 -0000

No question that filters for news and messaging are a 'next big thing'.