Deflexion.com

In case you've been wondering why I've spent so much time thinking about IMAP and email in general, it's because I thought email was primary, i.e., I thought of the messaging world like this:

          +--> Email
          |
          +--> Feed
          |
          +--> IM
          |
Email <-> +--> NNTP
          |
          +--> Torrent
          |
          +--> Web page
          |
          +--> other

But now, thanks to struggling with IMAP for N¹ years and writing Email in the Web 2.0 World & Watching the Deflexions and Reflexions (aka What's a Feed), I'm pretty sure that the messaging world is moving to this:

          +--> Email
          |
          +--> Feed
          |
          +--> IM
          |
 Feed <-> +--> NNTP
          |
          +--> Torrent
          |
          +--> Web page
          |
          +--> other

In other words feeds are primary and that explains why people are going so crazy over the feed specifications. I still think that there will continue to be lots of deflexion in all directions, but if you are wondering what to use to originate your messages (or any data you want to publish²), my vote is to use a feed.

¹I'm not sure what N is, but it's greater than 10. Yes, I've been trying to get IMAP to satisfy my messaging dreams for more than 10 years. And now that there is exactly one decent CUI IMAP client and zero decent GUI IMAP clients, I'm shifting my attention.

²By "publish" I mean either privately or publicly.
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