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Show HN: Rebump – Bump Important Emails Until They're Answered

33 points by ezrameanshelp 13y ago

ezrameanshelp 13y ago
This is a tool we built to use internally and are spinning off. We did the same with InVision App a while back. Rebump works with Gmail on Chrome/Firefox for now. Feedback treasured.
- matt_vera 13y ago
  It looks simple and valuable, which is good, but I feel my needs are already more than met with Boomerang for Gmail.
  - ezrameanshelp 13y ago
    Boomerang is awesome. And it will tell you when an email hasn't been replied to. But it won't automatically bump until you get a response. We think Rebump saves time and workflow that way. It plays very nicely with both Boomerang and YesWare.
    - lutusp 13y ago
      > Boomerang is awesome. And it will tell you when an email hasn't been replied to. But it won't automatically bump until you get a response. That's because Boomerang understands and meets widely accepted email standards of behavior. > We think Rebump saves time and workflow that way. It's spam. No blizzard of words, however blinding, can change its identity. It renames a deplorable social email practice, but without changing its identity. Civilized people write once, then wait for a reply. Spammers "bump" over and over again until they either get a reply or are classed as spam.
      - ezrameanshelp 13y ago
        Civilized people remind their friends, coworkers and clients to follow-up on important emails. That's what this is for.
        lutusp 13y ago
        > Civilized people remind their friends, coworkers and clients to follow-up on important emails. Civilized people have inboxes and outboxes. If an e-mail isn't transferred to the the inbox, the pending-action category, then any attempt to change its status by repeat mails is at the very least disrespectful of the recipient's choice of priorities. All I am saying is that you need to find out how people think about these things. You're well past explaining, now you're rationalizing.
lutusp 13y ago
Quote: "Rebump sends multiple follow-up messages to your email recipients for you. These automated emails are customized to appear as if you sent the email yourself." Wow -- they managed not to use the word "spam" anywhere on their site.
- ezrameanshelp 13y ago
  It would be silly for spammers to use this. It would just increase the likelihood of them being marked as spam by people that already ignored their first try. This is for people who you expect an answer from but the email has fallen through the cracks. Maybe it's starred, maybe they opened it on mobile and forgot to save as new. Your concern is definitely one we are keeping an eye out for but haven't seen it yet.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > It would be silly for spammers to use this. It would just increase the likelihood of them being marked as spam by people that already ignored their first try. Not if the spammers use a botnet to change the email's source for each retry. Anyone who thinks spam originates from a fixed server name and IP is living in the past. More here: http://www.arachnoid.com/lutusp/antispam.html http://www.arachnoid.com/lutusp/antispam.html http://www.arachnoid.com/anti_spam/pic2_crop_small_trans.gif http://www.arachnoid.com/anti_spam/pic2_crop_small_trans.gif Also, an easy way for a legitimate sender to be redefined as a spammer is for them to send copies of an e-mail until they get a reply. > Your concern is definitely one we are keeping an eye out for but haven't seen it yet. Like Bitcoin thefts, you won't see any sign of it until it's too late. This idea violates the most basic civilized e-mail rule -- if you don't get a reply, don't badger the recipient. Spammers, of course, don't care about civilized behavior and will find this idea very appealing.
    - ezrameanshelp 13y ago
      We are not resending the original email. We are sending a new message you can customize that says some version of, "Did you see this?." Will definitely read up on those concerns. Thank you so much for the resources and for preventing us from getting sleep at night from now on. ;-)
JTon 13y ago
From the video: > You can easily monitor the status of each message you send and know if and when it gets read Huh? How?
- fxthea 13y ago
  Maybe pixels are placed in the emails?
  - matt_vera 13y ago
    Most likely yes. Same as how Sendgrid and Yesware do it.
- lutusp 13y ago
  There are a number of reliable ways to detect a read. The most common is to sent an HTML-format message with an embedded graphic link to the sender's server.
  - manuelflara 13y ago
    That's not reliable enough. A lot of email clients (or users) have images off by default, at least when reading emails from new senders.
    - lutusp 13y ago
      > That's not reliable enough. It's reliable enough for a spammer. Remember spam is a numbers game -- things only have to work as hoped a small percentage of the time for the system to work.
  - mariusz79 13y ago
    Try it with my Mutt:)
  - chacham15 13y ago
    Note: this will not work if the person you are emailing is using gmail because gmail caches (and changes the address of) all images in the email so it appears that the image was opened immediately.
uladzislau 13y ago
Looks cool and I'd like to try it. A few questions for you: How does it work technically? Is the same first message sent every time? What is the feedback from people who are being "rebumped"?
- ezrameanshelp 13y ago
  You can adjust the message and how frequently you want the bumps to happen. The people being bumped think it's you and they respond to the original email.
  - nuxi7 13y ago
    Except its glaringly obvious that the original sender didn't send the new email. Notably, your emails are HTML only.
chrisfarms 13y ago
Dear Busy Person, I know you get so many emails that it takes you a while to reply, so I thought I'd help you out by sending you more emails. Regards. Rebump. ------ Jest aside, nagging does work, so this technique probably would too, but I can imagine if someone started using it on me, it'd just filter the messages to the bin. The product does look very well executed. Best of luck.
- ezrameanshelp 13y ago
  You don't reply to an email and you get a reply a few days later: "Hey, I just wanted to make sure that you saw this. If you need any more details, just let me know. Thanks again!" If you did mean to reply to that first email, this gets the job done. You can also customize the message to whatever you want. Even: "bump!"
  - lutusp 13y ago
    It's a new name for spam. Renaming things has limited potential to change how we think about them.
- jeremysmyth 13y ago
  (I agree with everything you say but wanted to comment on a tiny three word snippet of your comment :) ) Nagging works if the person you're nagging has forgotten about you and if they hold you in high enough priority in the first place. However, if you mail someone competent and organized, and they deliberately shelve you because you are not as important to them as other things they're doing, they'll get annoyed if you nag. Like spam, nagging is an unpleasant intrusion on your attention. Automated nagging can't possibly improve upon that. Response expectation mismatch is a human problem with social solutions, not technical ones. If someone doesn't respond to me, I might know why, and if I don't I can restate my expectations in a manner appropriate to the relationship. Similarly, if someone requests something of me and has an expectation that I'll do it within 3 days, I can mail them to confirm receipt of the request and let them know it'll be more like 5. Expectation management in interpersonal relationships should be handled by the people involved.
Dorian-Marie 13y ago
As someone in the feedback chat told me: If you want mutiple accounts, you will need to sign in with an account, then sign out (top right of https://www.rebump.cc/emails/home/ https://www.rebump.cc/emails/home/), then sign in the other account, etc. Happy bumping
wpietri 13y ago
If I ever suspected a correspondent of using something like this, they would be dead to me. I appreciate a human-generated bump now and again, because it is a signal that they continue to care about what we were talking about. But automatically sending me message after machine-generated message to prod me into doing whatever they wanted? With no effort or intervening social judgment? Fuck that. For people to whom this appeals, I'd suggest my approach: keep a "pending" list. If you haven't heard back and still care, you can always take the 30 seconds to say, "Hey, have you had a chance to think more about this?" or whatever the contextually appropriate thing is.
- ezrameanshelp 13y ago
  As a human asking you for a response, I think I'd deserve one to my first email. I am writing the follow-ups in advance in case you starred it and forgot it, opened it on your cell and forgot to 'save as new.' Things like that. Also, you won't know it's machine generated, though we are considering an option to add a blurb explaining that it is a friendly reminder powered by Rebump. Would you feel differently if that were the default?
  - wpietri 13y ago
    Thinking you deserve a quick response to every email you send is entitled bullshit. The presumption of this tool is that your time is more valuable than mine. It's insulting. I may not know it's machine-generated the first time if you hide it well enough. But I damned well will the second or the third.
    - ezrameanshelp 13y ago
      Personally, I put a rebump on an email to someone I need a yes/no answer from. Maybe it's a proposal that needs approval. Maybe it's whether they'll be joining us this weekend for a beer (because I have to make reservations). I don't expect an immediate response, but I set a rebump for a day later (default is 3 days) because I shouldn't have to chase you down to get a simple answer. Definitely see your point about how annoying it would be to get these one email forwards from my great-aunt, though. We are trying to convey to users that Rebumps should be used judiciously. It seems to be working so far.
alecsmart1 13y ago
I know some might accuse you of spamming but this is extremely useful. Been using boomerang but that only remind me and then I have to manually send them an email. I hope it remains free though.
- ezrameanshelp 13y ago
  Thanks! Its usefulness to us is why we were motivated to spin it off and release it into the wild.
  - jerf 13y ago
    I tend to share the general HN opinion here. But I do feel obligated to point out that this is probably just about the most hostile environment you could possibly announce this into. Our hatred of it doesn't mean there's no market here. ... Stupid honesty.
    - ezrameanshelp 13y ago
      The feedback has been incredibly valuable. No regrets.
dalore 13y ago
... the more of a chance you have for a 100% response rate. sounds like it works 100% of the time, 50% of the time.
kohanz 13y ago
This is probably not the site you are looking for! You attempted to reach www.rebump.cc, but instead you actually reached a server identifying itself as www.ohmspa.com. This may be caused by a misconfiguration on the server or by something more serious. An attacker on your network could be trying to get you to visit a fake (and potentially harmful) version of www.rebump.cc. You should not proceed, especially if you have never seen this warning before for this site.
- ezrameanshelp 13y ago
  Yes! Many a heart skipped a beat during the period where this message was displayed, but we are back. All good. Thanks.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
geminitojanus 13y ago
The first time I see an email from this service, they will meet my permanent blacklist. This is absolutely, brutally intolerable. It's hard enough maintaining spam-free email without this nonsense.
- ezrameanshelp 13y ago
  It won't be from us. It will be an email from a loved one, asking simply if you saw the email they send you a few days ago. Be gentle.
joeblau 13y ago
I hope Gmail updates it spam algorithm to catch stuff like this.

33 points by ezrameanshelp 13y ago

This is a tool we built to use internally and are spinning off. We did the same with InVision App a while back. Rebump works with Gmail on Chrome/Firefox for now. Feedback treasured.

matt_vera 13y ago
It looks simple and valuable, which is good, but I feel my needs are already more than met with Boomerang for Gmail.
- ezrameanshelp 13y ago
  Boomerang is awesome. And it will tell you when an email hasn't been replied to. But it won't automatically bump until you get a response. We think Rebump saves time and workflow that way. It plays very nicely with both Boomerang and YesWare.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > Boomerang is awesome. And it will tell you when an email hasn't been replied to. But it won't automatically bump until you get a response. That's because Boomerang understands and meets widely accepted email standards of behavior. > We think Rebump saves time and workflow that way. It's spam. No blizzard of words, however blinding, can change its identity. It renames a deplorable social email practice, but without changing its identity. Civilized people write once, then wait for a reply. Spammers "bump" over and over again until they either get a reply or are classed as spam.
    - ezrameanshelp 13y ago
      Civilized people remind their friends, coworkers and clients to follow-up on important emails. That's what this is for.
      - lutusp 13y ago
        > Civilized people remind their friends, coworkers and clients to follow-up on important emails. Civilized people have inboxes and outboxes. If an e-mail isn't transferred to the the inbox, the pending-action category, then any attempt to change its status by repeat mails is at the very least disrespectful of the recipient's choice of priorities. All I am saying is that you need to find out how people think about these things. You're well past explaining, now you're rationalizing.

lutusp 13y ago

Quote: "Rebump sends multiple follow-up messages to your email recipients for you. These automated emails are customized to appear as if you sent the email yourself." Wow -- they managed not to use the word "spam" anywhere on their site.

ezrameanshelp 13y ago
It would be silly for spammers to use this. It would just increase the likelihood of them being marked as spam by people that already ignored their first try. This is for people who you expect an answer from but the email has fallen through the cracks. Maybe it's starred, maybe they opened it on mobile and forgot to save as new. Your concern is definitely one we are keeping an eye out for but haven't seen it yet.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > It would be silly for spammers to use this. It would just increase the likelihood of them being marked as spam by people that already ignored their first try. Not if the spammers use a botnet to change the email's source for each retry. Anyone who thinks spam originates from a fixed server name and IP is living in the past. More here: http://www.arachnoid.com/lutusp/antispam.html http://www.arachnoid.com/lutusp/antispam.html http://www.arachnoid.com/anti_spam/pic2_crop_small_trans.gif http://www.arachnoid.com/anti_spam/pic2_crop_small_trans.gif Also, an easy way for a legitimate sender to be redefined as a spammer is for them to send copies of an e-mail until they get a reply. > Your concern is definitely one we are keeping an eye out for but haven't seen it yet. Like Bitcoin thefts, you won't see any sign of it until it's too late. This idea violates the most basic civilized e-mail rule -- if you don't get a reply, don't badger the recipient. Spammers, of course, don't care about civilized behavior and will find this idea very appealing.
  - ezrameanshelp 13y ago
    We are not resending the original email. We are sending a new message you can customize that says some version of, "Did you see this?." Will definitely read up on those concerns. Thank you so much for the resources and for preventing us from getting sleep at night from now on. ;-)

JTon 13y ago

From the video: > You can easily monitor the status of each message you send and know if and when it gets read Huh? How?

fxthea 13y ago
Maybe pixels are placed in the emails?
- matt_vera 13y ago
  Most likely yes. Same as how Sendgrid and Yesware do it.
lutusp 13y ago
There are a number of reliable ways to detect a read. The most common is to sent an HTML-format message with an embedded graphic link to the sender's server.
- manuelflara 13y ago
  That's not reliable enough. A lot of email clients (or users) have images off by default, at least when reading emails from new senders.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > That's not reliable enough. It's reliable enough for a spammer. Remember spam is a numbers game -- things only have to work as hoped a small percentage of the time for the system to work.
- mariusz79 13y ago
  Try it with my Mutt:)
- chacham15 13y ago
  Note: this will not work if the person you are emailing is using gmail because gmail caches (and changes the address of) all images in the email so it appears that the image was opened immediately.

uladzislau 13y ago

Looks cool and I'd like to try it. A few questions for you: How does it work technically? Is the same first message sent every time? What is the feedback from people who are being "rebumped"?

ezrameanshelp 13y ago
You can adjust the message and how frequently you want the bumps to happen. The people being bumped think it's you and they respond to the original email.
- nuxi7 13y ago
  Except its glaringly obvious that the original sender didn't send the new email. Notably, your emails are HTML only.

chrisfarms 13y ago

Dear Busy Person, I know you get so many emails that it takes you a while to reply, so I thought I'd help you out by sending you more emails. Regards. Rebump. ------ Jest aside, nagging does work, so this technique probably would too, but I can imagine if someone started using it on me, it'd just filter the messages to the bin. The product does look very well executed. Best of luck.

ezrameanshelp 13y ago
You don't reply to an email and you get a reply a few days later: "Hey, I just wanted to make sure that you saw this. If you need any more details, just let me know. Thanks again!" If you did mean to reply to that first email, this gets the job done. You can also customize the message to whatever you want. Even: "bump!"
- lutusp 13y ago
  It's a new name for spam. Renaming things has limited potential to change how we think about them.
jeremysmyth 13y ago
(I agree with everything you say but wanted to comment on a tiny three word snippet of your comment :) ) Nagging works if the person you're nagging has forgotten about you and if they hold you in high enough priority in the first place. However, if you mail someone competent and organized, and they deliberately shelve you because you are not as important to them as other things they're doing, they'll get annoyed if you nag. Like spam, nagging is an unpleasant intrusion on your attention. Automated nagging can't possibly improve upon that. Response expectation mismatch is a human problem with social solutions, not technical ones. If someone doesn't respond to me, I might know why, and if I don't I can restate my expectations in a manner appropriate to the relationship. Similarly, if someone requests something of me and has an expectation that I'll do it within 3 days, I can mail them to confirm receipt of the request and let them know it'll be more like 5. Expectation management in interpersonal relationships should be handled by the people involved.

Dorian-Marie 13y ago

As someone in the feedback chat told me: If you want mutiple accounts, you will need to sign in with an account, then sign out (top right of https://www.rebump.cc/emails/home/ https://www.rebump.cc/emails/home/), then sign in the other account, etc. Happy bumping

wpietri 13y ago

If I ever suspected a correspondent of using something like this, they would be dead to me. I appreciate a human-generated bump now and again, because it is a signal that they continue to care about what we were talking about. But automatically sending me message after machine-generated message to prod me into doing whatever they wanted? With no effort or intervening social judgment? Fuck that. For people to whom this appeals, I'd suggest my approach: keep a "pending" list. If you haven't heard back and still care, you can always take the 30 seconds to say, "Hey, have you had a chance to think more about this?" or whatever the contextually appropriate thing is.

ezrameanshelp 13y ago
As a human asking you for a response, I think I'd deserve one to my first email. I am writing the follow-ups in advance in case you starred it and forgot it, opened it on your cell and forgot to 'save as new.' Things like that. Also, you won't know it's machine generated, though we are considering an option to add a blurb explaining that it is a friendly reminder powered by Rebump. Would you feel differently if that were the default?
- wpietri 13y ago
  Thinking you deserve a quick response to every email you send is entitled bullshit. The presumption of this tool is that your time is more valuable than mine. It's insulting. I may not know it's machine-generated the first time if you hide it well enough. But I damned well will the second or the third.
  - ezrameanshelp 13y ago
    Personally, I put a rebump on an email to someone I need a yes/no answer from. Maybe it's a proposal that needs approval. Maybe it's whether they'll be joining us this weekend for a beer (because I have to make reservations). I don't expect an immediate response, but I set a rebump for a day later (default is 3 days) because I shouldn't have to chase you down to get a simple answer. Definitely see your point about how annoying it would be to get these one email forwards from my great-aunt, though. We are trying to convey to users that Rebumps should be used judiciously. It seems to be working so far.

alecsmart1 13y ago

I know some might accuse you of spamming but this is extremely useful. Been using boomerang but that only remind me and then I have to manually send them an email. I hope it remains free though.

ezrameanshelp 13y ago
Thanks! Its usefulness to us is why we were motivated to spin it off and release it into the wild.
- jerf 13y ago
  I tend to share the general HN opinion here. But I do feel obligated to point out that this is probably just about the most hostile environment you could possibly announce this into. Our hatred of it doesn't mean there's no market here. ... Stupid honesty.
  - ezrameanshelp 13y ago
    The feedback has been incredibly valuable. No regrets.

dalore 13y ago

... the more of a chance you have for a 100% response rate. sounds like it works 100% of the time, 50% of the time.

kohanz 13y ago

This is probably not the site you are looking for! You attempted to reach www.rebump.cc, but instead you actually reached a server identifying itself as www.ohmspa.com. This may be caused by a misconfiguration on the server or by something more serious. An attacker on your network could be trying to get you to visit a fake (and potentially harmful) version of www.rebump.cc. You should not proceed, especially if you have never seen this warning before for this site.

ezrameanshelp 13y ago
Yes! Many a heart skipped a beat during the period where this message was displayed, but we are back. All good. Thanks.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

geminitojanus 13y ago

The first time I see an email from this service, they will meet my permanent blacklist. This is absolutely, brutally intolerable. It's hard enough maintaining spam-free email without this nonsense.

ezrameanshelp 13y ago
It won't be from us. It will be an email from a loved one, asking simply if you saw the email they send you a few days ago. Be gentle.

joeblau 13y ago

I hope Gmail updates it spam algorithm to catch stuff like this.