I think you hit the nail on the head. An email is yours in the sense that once sent to you, the sender cannot 'take it away' or 'modify it' or 'delete it'.
This is different than many other 'communication protocols' out there such as Facebook Posts, Twitter Posts, Slack comments, Shared Docs etc. which all have the notion of an 'owner' who can retract permissions, modify, delete etc. after 'send'. The email analogy would be the sender reaching into your inbox and deleting or modifying your email (ugh!). This is fundamentally what gives email the feel that there is no favored owner. Conversely, every recipient can feel that the email is theirs.
We're launching an email-like service, (https://tmail21.com) in the next couple of weeks. Our premise is to preserve the best aspects of email while fixing or improving on the worst.
We think one of the best aspects of email is the aforementioned 'democratic' (i.e. no favored owner) characteristic.
This is different than many other 'communication protocols' out there such as Facebook Posts, Twitter Posts, Slack comments, Shared Docs etc. which all have the notion of an 'owner' who can retract permissions, modify, delete etc. after 'send'. The email analogy would be the sender reaching into your inbox and deleting or modifying your email (ugh!). This is fundamentally what gives email the feel that there is no favored owner. Conversely, every recipient can feel that the email is theirs.
We're launching an email-like service, (https://tmail21.com) in the next couple of weeks. Our premise is to preserve the best aspects of email while fixing or improving on the worst.
We think one of the best aspects of email is the aforementioned 'democratic' (i.e. no favored owner) characteristic.