Dave Troy, Founder of Shortmail.com, says email is about relationships

Those of you on Twitter might already be familiar with Shortmail.com for all the buzz its been generating since its launch on Wednesday, 29th June.If you are fed up with lengthy emails, inbox clutter and spam, then Shortmail is for you. Shortmail is email that restricts messages to 500 characters, the ones you send and receive as well. Signing up is extremely easy, if you have a Twitter account. A Shortmail address [email protected] is reserved for you, waiting to be claimed by you.

You can use your Shortmail to send both private and public messages. All your public messages can be accessed at http://shortmail.com/YourAccountName

Shortmail is organized around users rather than headers, making it more relationship based.

“Limiting messages to 500 characters puts the burden of conciseness onto senders. And, 99% of spam email does not pass our length limitations, thereby allowing us to devote more computing resources to processing real message content. The fact that 90% of email on the Internet is spam is a major reason why there are not more new email service providers – and innovation in email. Our length limitation lets us innovate.” writes Dave Troy on his blog.

To know more, we at YourStory.in caught up with Dave in a rapid fire conversation via Shortmail. Edited excerpts below:

Why do you think Shortmail will work?

Everyone wants email to be better. We've seen massive global interest since our launch on Wednesday. Infact, do a Twitter search on Shortmail!

Why can't non Twitter users sign in?

We're sticking to the Twitter namespace to help drive awareness for now. We will have other options available soon.

Any new features to be launched soon?

Yes. We are working on an HTML5 mobile/touch client.

What are the challenges you face while trying to acquire new users?

We're not too concerned about the challenges. If we make something good, our users will drive adoption worldwide.

How do you plan to monetize Shortmail?

We want to get a fanatical following before worrying too much about monetization, but we have some ideas for hosting and other services that we think people will find valuable.

Do you have any specific plans for India?

We haven't yet got any plans specific to India yet, but are open to suggestions. One country we're thinking about going after specifically is Indonesia, which has incredible mobile/social penetration.

Please check out http://shortmail.com for more details! Let us know your thoughts by writing to us at [email protected]