Q&A: How Mozilla plans to prevent a messaging meltdown

 

Gallery

By Barry Collins

Posted on 4 Nov 2009 at 11:04

Mozilla recently announced plans to save us from the bombardment of email, IM and Twitter messages with a new web app called Raindrop.

Designed by the team behind Mozilla's Thunderbird email software, Raindrop aims to intelligently filter the hundreds or thousands of messages we're faced with every day.

Raindrop is still at the development stage, but we caught up with Mozilla's CEO of messaging, David Ascher, to find out more about his plans for the service.

Q What's the philosophy behind Raindrop?

A We had the idea for Raindrop as we were working on Thunderbird 3. We also wanted to explore messaging on the web. We want to see messaging on an open web, that builds in the values that Mozilla cares about.

We built Raindrop on an experimental platform, using the most modern web technologies. We already have downloadable desktop software in Thunderbird. We want to make sure there are open, thriving platforms on the web as well.

It would be nice to have a messaging system that lets you say, 'I'm at work and I really need to power through the work-related email'

Q What's wrong with the current web messaging systems?

A Facebook and Twitter are compelling and interesting, but they don't have things we think are ideal, such as search federation [simultaneously searching multiple online databases] and clear user rights. Facebook has the interests of its users at heart, but it has no incentive to let users take their data out of Facebook.

Q How will Raindrop filter messages so that the most important messages bubble to the top?

A We get many messages, but only a few are from real people in real conversations. We can do pattern matching - a message from Twitter saying someone is following you is clearly from a computer [and so less important].

People also communicate in different circles. Traditional email systems will put all these in one big pile. It would be nice to have a messaging system that lets you say, 'I'm at work and I really need to power through the work-related email'.