People blog about the most mundane everyday events, they publish the list of their friends on Facebook and they write one-liners on Twitter and in status messages on messenger about what they are doing 'at the moment'. Clearly there is a need for even more self-expression and mixing of the public and the private.

So why not a public email ? People could automatically post online the emails they send and the responses they get, others could watch the dialog evolve, witness deals being done, relationships forming and breaking up. They could comment on messages, point out typos, suggest more nuanced formulations, give advice, predict responses, 'collaborate', vote on best emails, share favorites, tag messages. To protect privacy, names could be obfuscated, but on the long term the real fun would be in following both 'sides' of the story, an exchange of letters between two parties and the preparations, considerations that went into it from each sides.
-- lkozma, Dec 18 2008

You mean, like a mailing list, only more public?
-- neelandan, Dec 18 2008


I´ve always considered my email to be public anyway, rather like postcards. I´ve never thought of them as secure.
-- nineteenthly, Dec 18 2008


Sounds like any number of fora to me.
-- phoenix, Dec 18 2008


Well, except that the writer doesn't filter it for public consumption. Then again, there are places where people seem to be pretty solipsistic, and people too. Then again again (why has [po] just come to mind?), maybe we want to hear from the non-solipsists on the probably spurious grounds that they're a bit less mad.
-- nineteenthly, Dec 18 2008


use mailinator.
-- Loris, Dec 18 2008


The audience gets to play Cyrano de Bergerac? I wouldn't want that done to my correspondence, but I can imagine it being quite interesting as an online reality show.
-- jutta, Dec 18 2008


This is not NNTP or usegroups. This is a person's private email being shown publicly, with only the sender's and receivers addresses being hidden as long as they did not choose to be exposed.

Sounds like a perfect fit for people who like to listen in to other's phone talks...

You cannot participate if your not a personal acquaintance, but you can suggest your thoughts, and if the owner likes them, they would leave them in their inbox or move them to some "publicly public" folders.
-- pashute, Aug 31 2009



random, halfbakery