Show HN: Shortwhale – Get fewer, shorter, and better emails

40 points

12 years ago

Dan Ariely and I are looking for ways to help people with high email load. One idea was Shortwhale, which we've tested for a few months now. The idea is super simple: It's a place to tell people how you prefer email and it offers a simple contact form that adds the necessary structure to email. Although technically trivial, it works extremely well for Dan. We have ideas on how to expand this but first we'd like to know if someone else might find this useful too (we know that this is only a solution for people who get tons of (unsolicited) email).

Underlying to all of this is the idea to put more demands on the sender (there are things to pick from a drop-down and people can create multiple-choice emails, which allows the receiver to answer with one click). However, what we found is that it can also make it easier for people to write Dan because it actually removes some demands from them: they know that he doesn't expect any formalities and the structure helps them too. And, above all, senders are more likely to get a response (and quicker).

Please have a look:

http://shortwhale.com

As an example, here's Dan's Shortwhale page (he links to it from his website and in his email signature):

http://shortwhale.com/danariely

HN, we'd love to hear what you think.

Many thanks, Dan Ariely and Dominik Grolimund

PS: If you're interested, Lifehacker published an interview with Dan where he talks about "how he works": lifehacker.com/im-dan-ariely-author-and-professor-and-this-is-how-i-1615748781