A Conversation with Keith Kouzmanoff of Inter7
If you like technology, you're going to enjoy this conversation. (If you like dogs, too.) Keith Kouzmanoff of Inter7 has decades of deep experience in the world of email, and an encyclopedic grasp of how it works. That's clear a minute or two into this lengthy, discursive, and sometimes inside-baseball conversation!
At times, Keith channels Wallace Shawn — sort of "My DNS with Andre" — and at times, he drop conversational asides that merit an hour of followup research!
Keith and host Matthew Dunn bat around some difficult email questions. Why does innovation in email proceed at this glacial pace? Why do other RFC/standards-based fields evolve more quickly? What channels compete with email, and how is that likely to affect email in the future?
If you'd like to have just a bit more idea what goes on behind the curtain in the Wonderful World of Email...this is the conversation for you.
TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00]
[00:00:09] Matthew Dunn: Good morning. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn hosted the future of email marketing and my guest, a man I've been hunting down for a few months now, Keith cosmonaut, postmaster general CML senior email postmaster, something like that of inner seven technologies. Hey Keith. Welcome.
[00:00:26] Keith Kouzmanoff: Thank you. Thank you very much.
[00:00:28] Thank you
[00:00:29] Matthew Dunn: very much. Radio announcer voice. Yes. Yes. And you can do your cruise director voice later. I'm sure there's still some muscle memory for that. Uh, fill people in on the elevator version of inner seven and then the elevator version of your expertise.
[00:00:45] Keith Kouzmanoff: I have a face for radio
[00:00:51] and there's seven, uh, years ago built this authentication piece in the MTA world to allow virtual users and virtual domains in the same machine. So you could have at the time of, you know, let's see let's date ourselves ready. Remember when Intel came out with the MX
[00:01:13] Matthew Dunn: processor? I do. That was the math extra math co-processor days, right?
[00:01:18] Yes. Yes.
[00:01:19] Keith Kouzmanoff: Yes. Four gigabyte hard drives were, you know, $500
[00:01:26] Matthew Dunn: it's fiction. I remember paying for, for a 10 Meg hyperdrive in my little fat.
[00:01:33] Keith Kouzmanoff: How about this? How about this? Your mailbox, your mail. There had a quota size of, are you ready?
[00:01:40] Matthew Dunn: 50 megs, 50 minutes. Huge, huge sea by five minutes in. And we're already, we're already on gray hair tech, our Canada that like most people go, oh,
[00:01:55] Keith Kouzmanoff: they have no.
[00:01:58] Um, so at the time, um, to have one machine at virtual domains was, uh, it was all over most MTAs. Did it send, send mail? Yeah, I was out there. Um, people are looking for other, uh, mail platforms. Dan DJB, Dan Bernstein. He's a mathematician in, uh, university of Chicago. His claim to fame is encryption. Um, he built this, uh, MTA called QML and I believe.
[00:02:28] At the time he had a bug bounty, right? $500. You can't bust me. The kind of ironic thing is he's was I think, I don't think he ever made it up. I think one person possibly, but for you and I to actually use it, like we have to put tires on it. We have to put oil in it. It's got to have a gear shifter and steering wheel.
[00:02:48] Right. So, you know, part of his, his, uh, MTA was, you know, the real, real world, real usable functionality is kind of, uh, you know, it's, it's kind of unusable. Right,
[00:03:04] Matthew Dunn: right, right.
[00:03:05] Keith Kouzmanoff: And there's licensing. He had, um, you couldn't put it in distribution. Right. So it couldn't come with red hat. It couldn't come with distribution.
[00:03:16] Cause it was, it wasn't an, a GPL library. Um, or at least I couldn't put my package on it and package it up. As, uh, you know, yum or apt get or anything like that, couldn't be in the repose justice stock. Binaries could be in the repo, which were kind of unusable for you.
[00:03:37] Matthew Dunn: Right. No, no, no.
[00:03:39] Keith Kouzmanoff: Yeah. The patch. Yeah.
[00:03:40] So we bought, we, uh, KVL Ken wrote this authentication part for virtual users. So at the 50 men size builders, if you had a, uh, domain, you were hosting a domain hosting place, um, you couldn't have sales@mydomain.com and sales at somebody else's domain.com. I don't ever encountered that, but not have sales ad.
[00:04:10] What do you mean somebody else? Got it for
[00:04:12] keithk_raw: everybody
[00:04:12] Matthew Dunn: else. Got it. Yeah. Completely different company, but apparently only one sales person in the university. So, uh,
[00:04:20] Keith Kouzmanoff: wow. Yeah, a gentleman by the name of Bob who owned this little company out of his garage called Bodaddy was the first customer back then for a whopping $50.
[00:04:31] Uh, we install the mail server for him. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I think from that for a long time, uh, Matthew, uh, people have inundated us with these ideas of grand jury. They're going to be something and I would say 99 out of a hundred, they're just pipe dreams that never accumulate anything. But every once in a while, these things actually going
[00:05:02] Matthew Dunn: out there yeah.
[00:05:04] 10 years to an overnight success. So, so Q mail is still sort of front and center. What. Okay.
[00:05:10] Keith Kouzmanoff: We are clustering. Yup. Uh, high volume, uh, load bouncing, high availability, uh, mostly for mailbox providers. Um, her Yahoo at one time was using it. I'm not sure what they're using right now. Uh, Zimbra was using it with, uh, Comcast had, uh, Zimbra in the backend.
[00:05:33] I think a lot of people still use it. There's a reason why you would use it as probably for the high security value of it. The one thing there's not a lot of people know about it, or know how to use it. Yeah. There you go. Just for that fact alone.
[00:05:51] Matthew Dunn: Right. So, so you're, you're kind of, you're talking yourself into that category.
[00:05:59] Of the, uh, similar to the COBOL guys, you know, and it was looking around going, wait a minute, nobody knows how this works. They're all gone, play golf, doing something else. And my company still depends on it. Oops.
[00:06:16] Keith Kouzmanoff: Yeah. I mean, I think in the open source world, right. When I'm looking for a solution, um, I'm looking at a bunch of things.
[00:06:28] One I want to see it's a popular is the, is the product, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So let's take WordPress for example, right? New way, pocket, bunch of, of ad-ons for this, for this million, it's probably, I would argue it's probably the most, or it's the de facto, uh, first website that you you're putting up there right now.
[00:06:55] But there's a problem with that because it's so popular. What, what else? It needs to be patched up every day, every week. There's pig day. Uh, dang.
[00:07:11] Matthew Dunn: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So same and same as the case mail email side, right? Let's say
[00:07:18] Keith Kouzmanoff: that 22 years. Um, there's been various select companies who have, um, looked at the Q mail solution, like the IRS, the feds, the EFL project, uh, CSC won the bid. I don't know. When was that? Back in 2000. Wow. For whatever they got over budgeted, of course the feds took it back and they were looking for a mail server, secure the highest security mail server to throw over the wall.
[00:07:49] I mean, things, things that in the feds, you literally have to throw it over the wall. Right. And, uh, they, they contacted Dan DJB and he said, why, why are you contacting me? I'm suing the federal government for encryption laws that you guys have the cryption should be free for everyone. Right. Just Americans.
[00:08:15] They said, well, who would you decide? You know, if we had to go this route, they said, oh yeah, call up these guys over here. So thanks Dan, my hats off to you. I appreciate you for shouting
[00:08:28] Matthew Dunn: us out. Yes. What is the status of that encryption battle?
[00:08:35] Keith Kouzmanoff: I don't know, smart, smart guy, very smart guy. So bank of America is another company that we did work with.
[00:08:42] Well, it was for their high end execs. You know, it's not the corporate side,
[00:08:49] Matthew Dunn: probably
[00:08:50] Keith Kouzmanoff: hide from other people's eyes if you know what I mean, right. Not to mention any there's some people who try and do that, not to mention any names, Hillary Clinton that do try to do that, the hiding dirt mail, but it gets found anywhere.
[00:09:04] Right? Any names at all?
[00:09:10] Matthew Dunn: Hey,
[00:09:10] Keith Kouzmanoff: listen, Matthew. Okay. Do you use Gmail? I do. Yes. There's not less than three operating companies that do not belong to offer that. Read that email. There you
[00:09:26] Matthew Dunn: go. I, I, they must hate me. It's like, I get a lot of crap.
[00:09:35] Like
[00:09:38] Keith Kouzmanoff: if you're trying to keep some, um, communication inside private using any of these, these mass competence for no fault of their right.
[00:09:50] Matthew Dunn: Their business model, their
[00:09:51] Keith Kouzmanoff: business model. Right. Something that we
[00:09:53] keithk_raw: don't
[00:09:53] Matthew Dunn: want. Yeah. And, and, and I mean, if like you don't go say, where do they make their money advertising?
[00:09:59] Okay. Check. Right. Like, it's not super tough to conclude the alignment of motives is like right. Angles. So go into it with open eyes if you're going to use it. Yeah. Not, not, not all of them more than one addresses I use are sitting on that particular platform. Yeah. Yeah. And we're, I mean, you touched on it, so let's, let's kick it around a little bit.
[00:10:24] Where we're definitely entering a different stage in terms of the broad cultural understanding of, and attitudes towards privacy security control of digital assets and things like that. Yes.
[00:10:40] Keith Kouzmanoff: A hundred percent.
[00:10:41] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. It's, uh, it's funny. It's taken so long.
[00:10:46] Keith Kouzmanoff: Yeah. Who would have thought,
[00:10:51] Matthew Dunn: I suppose. I mean, I'm partial its complexity, right?
[00:10:54] Partially it's, uh, you know, some of the issues that you touched on, even in a couple minutes, they're very technical, right. Esoteric to even people who work in the field. I mean, I I've had email, marketers look kind of blankly at me when I say MTA. It's like they don't put their hands on that piece of it.
[00:11:14] Right. It just happens somewhere out there. Um, and he started diving dead to a whole bunch more layers, like arguments about the encryption guy in the streets going, ah, I can't even read my passwords, man. Can you make it easier? Right? Can you make it easier? Okay. Fine by me. Wow. You're giving something away if you make it do easy.
[00:11:33] Yeah. Yeah, I know, but I don't have time to deal with that. Okay. Hmm. And a different we'll trade off convenience. We Americans we'll trade off convenience for privacy. At least we have for good 20 plus.
[00:11:47] Keith Kouzmanoff: Right. And so some onus on that is on me asking you for your password. Right? So Matthew, you're signing up for Google and I'm on my alphabet.
[00:11:58] And I'm asking you to type in your password, right? Well, I'm going to be maybe expiring that password at 90 days. And when I expire that password in 90 days, every time I asked you for a new password, Matthew, uh, I'm going to take away one letter and one number that you cannot use. Okay. I'm going to force you eventually to pick a new password.
[00:12:20] Right, right, right. I'm not going to let you pick your old one again. Yeah. Right. I'm going to take away certain letters and numbers that you have to, you have to physically change that password that you thought you would use for the rest of your lives. Paths were 1, 2, 3, all of a sudden I'm going to take away the number three.
[00:12:41] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. And, or. Yeah. Or offer the one you can't remember, so that you'll jot it down on a sticky note. So it's even less secure, right?
[00:12:52] Keith Kouzmanoff: I think, um, if the InfoSec community to tell the, um, the end user, right. To how to be more productive online, I think the oldest two in the InfoSec community is for the companies and corporations to disable the ability for that, that reusing a passwords.
[00:13:15] Yeah.
[00:13:16] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Well, I mean, in a way it goes to alignment of motives. If in the long run, the thing that I'm paying you to do, whether I'm paying you with money or attention lead that a shot, I think I'm paying you to do, if that's easily breached, eventually I'm more likely to cancel. So to some extent helped me do this in a smart way, because you've got people whose full-time job is secure.
[00:13:39] Makes sense. Right. Will I stick around if my email doesn't get breached there? Yeah. Would I dump it to your point about WordPress? Right. WordPress, arguably, because it's so popular because if it's architecture, because PHP blows, um, is, is like, you're just begging to get your website hammered. If you use WordPress.
[00:14:02] And eventually, like I opted out of it for, for the company sites that we have to run because the maintenance was such a pain in the ass. Like, nah, no thanks. Right. Can't deal with it anymore. I just didn't have time for that.
[00:14:14] Keith Kouzmanoff: Yeah, it lost its appeal of being free. Right now. I have to post a company now to host this free stuff, because it is just reliably insecure.
[00:14:26] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Free as in freezing beer free fill in the blanks. Right.
[00:14:30] Keith Kouzmanoff: Mixed, mixed signals, right? Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no,
[00:14:36] Matthew Dunn: yes. Yeah. Or, or, or know what you're picking and why you're picking it. My, my, my, uh, my older son is, uh, is teeing up a business. He's a musician and music teacher and he's teeing up a business. So dad, what should I build my website?
[00:14:49] Honestly, on balance. WordPress is probably a good choice at this stage of the game because that big ecosystem of plugins and extensions, which you mentioned, um, stuff that you, you won't be able to build, that you can go boom, install and run. However caveat you're going to be learning WordPress really thoroughly.
[00:15:09] If you go down that road, why? Because the sucker doesn't just keep. Right patch this, upgrade that. What do you mean? I can't get to that table. We had a yada yada, I think it'll be a valuable lesson, uh, on the side, along with the website as an outcome. Yeah.
[00:15:29] Keith Kouzmanoff: Privacy. Um, well, and as apple is moved the gauntlet, right?
[00:15:40] For preset changing data coming in. And
[00:15:44] Matthew Dunn: what do you think about that?
[00:15:47] Keith Kouzmanoff: I say, let's, let's put another pair of glasses. And I say, and this is my bed. My argument since day one, since apple announces, I said, I said, why are you bug it out about apple protecting its users? When you, as an email marketer, you should be, you should already be doing that for all of your people on your list.
[00:16:10] In fact, why don't you do it now? In advance of it. So when Microsoft does it, or when another company does it, you're already prepared. You're already blocked. You're going to put the blinders on you, something like, and set up, um, you know, use something like a CDN. Right? I see the end that will mask where people are coming from.
[00:16:32] So even, even though you are reporting open and an action, whether they prefecture not you're protecting the end user's IP address or an end user user agent, like stop doing it. Right. You can do that as an email marketer. You can already do that right now.
[00:16:50] Matthew Dunn: Right? Right. No, that's a good point. And I, and actually I agree with you quite strongly.
[00:16:57] I, I think there's a lot of, uh, somewhat self-serving rhetoric. About apple shift of how they're handling in this case, the image opens and the data returned from those like, oh, we won't be able to know X. And we were such good actors before really, uh, were all of you actually protecting that as you said, and really using it, or was it just kind of a convenient crutch that happened to get built in as a historical accident to the predominant standards in email?
[00:17:30] So you had kind of an easy, free, cheap measure with the, with the open signal and HTTP that told you something of kind of indicator value. Now, now you're like, this is not as good an indicator, like oh, okay. And, and what are you going to do? Right? Yeah, it does put it, it does put, um, it does put pressure on a measure that I'm not.
[00:17:54] Is really any better as a substitute? Um, oh, well, I'll, we'll all focus on clicks now, but one out of a hundred instead of a hundred. So that's a problem. And I don't think clicks are going to keep being open my browser and send 27 JavaScripts off into the world forever. I think, I think we're going to start to look at that because it's such a stupid whole.
[00:18:19] Keith Kouzmanoff: Yeah. And the other side is why are we even focusing on that entry point where the breadcrumbs start? We're always, I think we've been hyper-focusing right. But I say let's, let's focus on them backwards forward let's, let's start at the conversions and then work our way forward from there. Right. Right. Of course.
[00:18:43] Is are, they are good key indicators, key performance indicators. I don't think we need to throw the baby out with the bath water, right. For some of the metrics that are coming in, but thank them for the grain of salt. The goal isn't open, right? The goal is conversion. Whether it be branding, visible eyes on, or actually a purchase or a submit or some, some other form of action.
[00:19:08] Right. And then breadcrumb it forward from there.
[00:19:14] Matthew Dunn: That's true for a lot of businesses. But for, for others, the content of the email itself may actually be the thing of value, the exchange, et cetera. For example, I paid, I pay X bucks a month and I sit down and read Ben Thompson Stratec theory every morning when he sends it.
[00:19:35] First thing I do is like, yay. New stir tech re from Ben, what do I get out of an email? It's what I read in the email. It's not a click. It's not in anything. Well, he's already
[00:19:44] Keith Kouzmanoff: converted.
[00:19:45] Matthew Dunn: Absolutely. But,
[00:19:48] Keith Kouzmanoff: right, right, right, right. Okay. Um, I guess, so you're using email where I think you add, you can argue where female came from originally and it's from group dig, you know, Reddit now, you know, um, newsgroups that were out there, do you know, MLM is with your mailing list managers, right.
[00:20:12] And that's really where email can. The individual email can actually, before that came from messaging that came out and from the group we communicated within the. Right. And then, um, someone got the bright idea of, you know, what will be great is this, this direct, there's a one-on-one communication part, uh, from, from that.
[00:20:35] But you're the way you're using your ad, you know, is, is actually information gathering. So I argue that, that, that one, isn't a good indication of, you know, the metrics of
[00:20:48] Matthew Dunn: email sub stack sub stack would probably be on my side here and they're not.
[00:20:55] Keith Kouzmanoff: Okay. Again, what is the, um, what is the conversion point on that?
[00:21:04] Matthew Dunn: Right? You say you're, you're just, your argument is I'm already converted. A Marty bought him, but that narrows down what you do with email and the measures and metrics were, were, were batting around to a marketing function only as opposed to a delivery function.
[00:21:19] And I'm saying the delivery function also has value for some categories of businesses. We tend to talk, we tend to talk, it comes to market against.
[00:21:26] Keith Kouzmanoff: Absolutely. Thank you. Back to you. As a subscriber, a lot of people go, Hey, the postmaster AOL or the postmaster Hotmail is causing me problems because.
[00:21:37] Actually you have more power arguably in your mailbox to determine what comes in and what, what does it go
[00:21:44] Matthew Dunn: for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. For sure. For sure. I mean, one of the things that vexes me about email is kind of fascinating, um, SMT internet email, which is what we're talking about. When we say email now, um, decent person to person, point to point communication mechanism.
[00:22:04] Okay. Small group geometrically, shittier as the size of the group goes up. You don't reverse chronology threads. If there's a worst way to arrange texts, then that I'm not sure anyone's ever come up with. It's like just horrendous group communication tool and like slack, right. You jump in late. I'm never going to make sense of this.
[00:22:25] This is just crap.
[00:22:28] Keith Kouzmanoff: Well, there's, there's a disappointment in there too, though. Yeah. Well, as if I'm a slack admin and you, and I invite you into my slack group, I expect you to use things like the threading part of about too, right? When you don't, when you start a new conversation on the same subject, another thread is coming in through your yourself for interacting and other mail servers in the way we're communicating.
[00:22:55] Right. That too. Yeah. Um, from the notes in there as well, right? Yeah, absolutely. And it's the way it's called digest actually. Meaning it's how we're digesting that
[00:23:05] Matthew Dunn: information. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. Gotcha. I noticed on the email gig slack channel, which would probably on, uh, someone chimed in, I think in the general general channel with something this morning and the admin.
[00:23:19] I think on the wrist and said, please use threaded replies, like, okay, cool. Someone's paying attention. But there's the last time I checked finding a group admin to manage email threads, pretty rare, pretty rare. So you end up with these gnarly multi forward signature, 62 times messages that you got to hang on to.
[00:23:42] Cause there's a, there's a gold nugget in there somewhere or there's, or, or there's an archive that's going to, you're going to need a legal case later or some, some stuff like that. Yeah. And as messy as it is, it's still this weird digital Swiss army knife that we use for marketing and sub stacked delivered ease, and one-to-one communication and notes from your mother and all that other stuff.
[00:24:04] And it just keeps kind of keeps chugging along and finding ways to reinvent itself and stay viable, which is.
[00:24:13] Keith Kouzmanoff: Yeah. Well, I mean, I hate to say what, what the other choice
[00:24:18] Matthew Dunn: you're absolutely right. What
[00:24:19] Keith Kouzmanoff: is the other choice? I've got to get my bank statement on WhatsApp.
[00:24:24] Matthew Dunn: Would you, you wouldn't China, could you, oh no.
[00:24:28] You it's your only option. That's your only
[00:24:30] Keith Kouzmanoff: option, right? Yeah, because it's become centralized, right? Yeah. I would say I would argue the death of email if it becomes centralized.
[00:24:43] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Fair point. Yeah. I mean, I ran the thought experiment once, probably over a beer with somebody I'd be like, what if the U S PTO had gotten involved in some useful way in email early, early on, like, you know, we'll provide certification that this is the guy from, you know, from campaign genius.io.
[00:25:05] When you get the email or something like that, it was like, there would've been some utility. But it would have been a fricking disaster in, in the channel trying to do that, that evolution thing, because they're not going to move fast enough ever.
[00:25:20] Keith Kouzmanoff: No. And, um, it's sometimes it's like, um, you know, how many instant messaging apps are out there.
[00:25:27] Right. Right. I mean, I saw you interviewed Matthew and he sought out, I don't know, six or seven different ones. That is, that is what I mean, I'm thinking whatever happened to aim AOL
[00:25:40] Matthew Dunn: instant messenger aim. And then what was it, what was the ladder to
[00:25:44] Keith Kouzmanoff: see as well? I made it
[00:25:46] Matthew Dunn: was ICQ that's
[00:25:50] Keith Kouzmanoff: for sure. Right?
[00:25:52] Those are your only choices, right? They were,
[00:25:54] Matthew Dunn: yeah, they were. And then this explosion, and as I always say, it's messaging platforms, but it's a plural. And when you say email, it's, it's a singular, relatively speaking set of standards. Um, and, and the. It's hard. You're hard pressed to name another digital channel except the web, which is not a, which is not a back and forth,
[00:26:15] Keith Kouzmanoff: but it actually operates on the similar platform.
[00:26:18] Right. Because we're following RFCs web Paul's RFCs. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So we're, we actually told ourselves that we're gonna follow these RMCs or, or at least these are the suggested RFCs I don't know any bail, uh, server out there that falls up to a hundred percent. Absolutely. Sure, sure. But these are our guidelines in here and these are what should happen in there.
[00:26:45] And we would come up with problems. We, we write them and implement them as a community and not one person hoards, anything on there. I'll give you an example in the email specifically, right? So domain keys and D K I N. Well, domain keys ya'll own the patent for a domain keys. And of course they gave them in a way free technology wise, but you know, they always held that patent.
[00:27:14] All right. So what did the community do they migrated over to only signing with domain keys? I mean, DK, I am now, right. Um, uh, Microsoft came up with a sender ID. It was sort of like the SPF, the sender ID platform, tech tracker that they wanted to, uh, enforce and they pushed it RFC for that. And the community just didn't adopt it.
[00:27:42] They were like, well, what, what, what does that have to do with the price of corn in Egypt? Who cares? Um, so we're only going to accept. The community also accepts in there as well. And you have to play fair on the fair rules of, Hey, this has this, the way this works right now is how it has to be an open community.
[00:28:02] Right? And you bring in some proprietary platform that I'm supposed to follow. You kind of break that trust relationship, and it
[00:28:10] Matthew Dunn: probably won't get it. Won't become an RFC. It won't get validated.
[00:28:17] Keith Kouzmanoff: It could be coming RFC, but everybody could just ignore it.
[00:28:21] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, it could just be ignored. I mean, I've been trying to start gathering pieces.
[00:28:26] I'm doing a talk in a couple of months. That's way too way too ambitious, but I've been trying to gather that, start gathering some pieces about something that struck me, which is as, as a developer, I look at how JavaScript has been. And it's like every year, there's some substantially new stuff there. And I look at email ago, every decade, there's diddly, squat, new
[00:28:54] Keith Kouzmanoff: consistency, right.
[00:28:56] Nothing. It hasn't changed much. And to
[00:28:59] Matthew Dunn: bothersome, why are we, why are we using RFCs from the nineties?
[00:29:05] Keith Kouzmanoff: Right. Why aren't all these people dead seriously.
[00:29:12] Matthew Dunn: When, when, uh, when the news about MPP first broke, uh, we were surrounded by apple devices, right? So, uh, fire up the developer, this, that, and the other, get the beta installed on, on the iPhone that iPhone that's sitting there gathering dust.
[00:29:27] And I end up trolling through the I map, uh, the, I map RFCs, which are from the nineties, like, yep. That actually matters. In the way apple is which call are they making to read the message body without flipping the flag to say like, I'm looking at, I'm looking at our, from the nineties that are entirely material in this big change in the email space.
[00:29:49] Like what's the, what's the last RFC that actually stuck and I'm sorry. Bless Matthew and his compadres, but Bimini has got Boodley squat for traction. 15% of that. It's a great idea. But
[00:30:05] Keith Kouzmanoff: when you're going to force me to pay a thousand dollars a little logo, it doesn't for you and it doesn't become
[00:30:12] Matthew Dunn: feasible.
[00:30:13] Why would I bother? Why would I bother? Yeah.
[00:30:16] Keith Kouzmanoff: Yeah. In fact, if I change my username, Google puts up a little, um, you know, okay. Whatever it K. And that's fine. I'm fine with that. What do I need my logo for? Is it worth a thousand dollars? Yeah.
[00:30:33] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a. It's a really modest Gaga, you know, planetary network involved too.
[00:30:43] Put a logo to size of a postage stamp next year name like, oh, come on. That's hardly, it doesn't seem that ambitious does it.
[00:30:55] Keith Kouzmanoff: I think at the mailbox providers had their fingers in part of that money that was
[00:31:00] Matthew Dunn: coming. Maybe that influenced your
[00:31:02] Keith Kouzmanoff: delivery. I know, again, we have to go back to who's in control of the mailbox itself and me. In charge of what happens online. It's all about trust, right? Where's that trust value in. And it's the unwritten word, a world to out there in the mailbox, reminders and postmasters.
[00:31:28] They have circles of influence as well. Right. And then looking at trust always, right? No, uh, in the impulse secondary, they, when someone goes, ah, And then they want to do good. You know, they had a burning Bush, you know, evolutionary, uh, a revolutionary idea then, Hey, maybe doing all this bad stuff, isn't good to the world.
[00:31:56] And they wanted to do, but in post and he calls that a gray hat, you know, you can never go to white, you know, once, once you leave the white hemisphere, you're never, you're never coming back to white. Right. The best you can do is come back to gray.
[00:32:13] Matthew Dunn: Right? So
[00:32:17] Keith Kouzmanoff: the goal is what is, what is the sole purpose of that?
[00:32:22] Matthew Dunn: I would argue it's commercial branding.
[00:32:26] Keith Kouzmanoff: Commercial, right?
[00:32:28] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Like this from a business motive. Why would any pump we're going to plunk down a thousand bucks? Cause you think your email is going to be one, one zillions of a cent stickier percent stickier or something like that. Brand impression and things like that.
[00:32:41] And I know it, I know it matters and I'm not totally dissing BME, but I am calling out email for being quite static in terms of technology evolution, contrast, JavaScript, substantial changes and advances as a language that get taken up quite broadly, quite quickly, almost year on year. Even now it's like, wow, that's really something probably because there's dollars attached to it.
[00:33:12] Keith Kouzmanoff: I don't know that relationship between I'm trying to follow
[00:33:20] Matthew Dunn: the breadcrumbs. It's this. How, how many browser tabs do you tend to open the course of a day? Browser
[00:33:28] Keith Kouzmanoff: tabs? Yeah. Full
[00:33:30] Matthew Dunn: three. Four. Okay. So three, 400 for me, give a tag. Um, I'm running most of the apps that run my business inside through a browser.
[00:33:42] Yeah. Through
[00:33:43] Keith Kouzmanoff: the browser itself as the hat.
[00:33:47] Matthew Dunn: Right. But the, but the functional logic is the JavaScript thing running inside that tower. So the reason that language keeps evolving like this is because there's a constant, we, we, if we could make this go faster, do more, do different. We could bring these functions.
[00:34:04] Oh yeah. We all agreed. That'd be better. So that language is just, it's gone from a total. To the ma to the mainstream, probably one of the most widely used in the world, like it's evolved really quickly has continued to evolve really quickly, including RFCs right. Standard open standards. If you say I'm going to pee, I'm going to make a new browser.
[00:34:23] I tested one the other day. Some, some completely different browser platforms. Like, no, no, no, no. I've got Ms. Xscape navigator. I've got those running all the time. No, uh, starts with an a, my son told me, yeah, what is the Allegro? Now I'll come up with the name in a minute here, but full ESX, full JavaScript, implementation.
[00:34:49] Like the apps I run didn't break in that browser. So you've got that RFC based community-based standard. That's keeps evolving quickly. You've got email that hasn't changed a whole heck of a lot in a long time.
[00:35:05] Keith Kouzmanoff: Well, Um, well, you you're talking about like the cloud and decentralization of computers and the oxygen isn't right now that the old is, and you're able to use those apps right now is because of your bandwidth and the computing power of your PC or laptop right now.
[00:35:24] Okay. What you, what kind of bandwidth
[00:35:26] Matthew Dunn: do you have? Like a gig? Yeah, 1.2 gigs. I think
[00:35:30] Keith Kouzmanoff: that, well, guess what, 90% of the America doesn't have that bandwidth. Sure, sure. The middle of a cornfield is still on dial.
[00:35:40] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. But you look at the fastest growing sectors of business functions and they're all browser and cloud.
[00:35:49] Keith Kouzmanoff: Right. I think we may get there, I think. Yeah. But I think when we get probably maybe 10 get. And with wines and 50% that will have that accessibility. And I think that's where that's where your browser apps and, you know, so decentralization or centralization of apps will become more prevalent in that. I mean, I see the future future, probably going back to the old
[00:36:19] Matthew Dunn: mainframe, uh,
[00:36:22] Keith Kouzmanoff: cloud computing.
[00:36:24] I hate this common word stuff that, uh, comes out all the time. Matthew, if you want to listen, listen, next time. You're at a trade show. You're ready. This is hilarious. Okay. Go grab yourself a beer or a coffee. Okay. And just go to the closest person next to you and, um, ask them what the difference between a hard and a soft bounce email is and find out how many different explanations that you'll come up with by the end of the afternoon, right there.
[00:36:52] Because the way that, you know, people are describing stuff, They're using, uh, I guess more common, common word marketing terms and into this, then there was that, but back when we didn't have centralization, uh, or, um, the PC was not existed, right. We're all used to using, um, uh, token rain right before
[00:37:20] Matthew Dunn: either that, uh, so it can bring in and go back, go back sixties.
[00:37:24] Like first, first actual email systems were on, uh, on timeshare platforms, like one computer pretending to be multiple computers, vehicles, green screen, right?
[00:37:34] Keith Kouzmanoff: Yes. Yes. So, I mean, I don't know what I'm, where that's going with email other than, um, I argue that. Uh, email is not probably going anywhere, just because of the fact that you just said the RFCs are 90 years old, nobody is going to embrace anything that doesn't change the metrics into the community or standardization.
[00:38:00] And the only way I would probably collapse on itself, um, you know, like alphabet, which already owns 70% of the email list. Right. And anybody's email, if that gets any larger,
[00:38:25] I think that's the that's right. Oh, hold on one second.
[00:38:57] Sorry about that,
[00:39:00] Matthew Dunn: but my mind so old, she doesn't even bark anymore. Um, yeah. So you're saying if, uh, you know, alphabet group Gmail, uh, owns any more inboxes, you might see them actually starting to sort of push standardization or, or push new standards. I have to say on that math I've been surprised and narrowly speaking, pleasantly surprised that amp has gone nowhere amp for email.
[00:39:28] Don't tell them that seriously bark posts the other day, 0.4% of our customers are sending out amp enabled emails. Okay. I guess you'd call that not it's like, so despite that sort of quasi. Not monopoly, but do opposite position on the inbox, Google with not the hugest effort I've ever seen out of Google.
[00:39:50] Google said, boom, new, better, more interactive, uh, aspect to email. And they really have not gotten market traction. They really haven't.
[00:40:02] Keith Kouzmanoff: I, I don't know Google isn't like use us because we're the best. They don't really market their stuff to be. I don't, I don't know better than the competition or the latest, greatest thing views.
[00:40:18] I mean, why Google plus, uh, the Google voice, Google messaging, Google calendar. I mean, all those things are like, yeah, if you can do it, we can do it too. We, we really don't care, you know, that you use it or not. Right. And they're, and they're literally taking a pulse on us, on you and I right there saying, well, is Matthew using it?
[00:40:43] Nope. Is Keith using it? No end to life. Right track. Let's try something else that's out there. And the problem with, um, I think with amp is a, it's a little blowy. I would say, you know, I, I get, I emailed. Um, Matt view where a lot of people don't take into consideration is the message size that people are sending out, or that we're the third party, uh, people that they're connecting with or where this traffic is going.
[00:41:14] Are these images that get called down? I would say a Walmart is probably one. If you've ever subscribed to their emails, their their message size is a quarter or a half a Meg without the images. Wow. Why? I have no idea why sloppy.
[00:41:36] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Like
[00:41:37] Keith Kouzmanoff: if, if you, if you're delivering a million messages out and then, you know, or, you know, 150 million out to your subscriber base a day, right.
[00:41:48] The ecosystem doesn't really, you know, that's not really friendly. Yeah.
[00:41:53] Matthew Dunn: Wow. I'm going to guess super big fat image intensive and really, really, really blocky look into, I mean, it fits the brand, but on a guest, I'm going to guess what the is, what their messages look like. Um, Hmm. Interesting. Uh, by contrast, long-term Amazon user, I get a ton of Amazon email and I know they do all of that MTA on, up in house.
[00:42:20] Cause they're so big. They can and should, um, they're they're, they're pretty good. They're pretty good. At email. Got to say
[00:42:30] Keith Kouzmanoff: their mail servers.
[00:42:31] Matthew Dunn: No, just like that. The aesthetics that. Things, they use email for how they evolve that case in point used to be order fill in the blanks on Amazon. You'd get an email with your order for filling the blanks is on the way, and it's going to ship.
[00:42:50] Now, you get the order, you placed order number X is on the way and it'll be shipped, but it doesn't say what it is is they realized not all of their users wanted their inbox to say, you just ordered a blow up. What? Like, so they dropped the product picture and product name out of their email, out of their confirmation email.
[00:43:10] Oh, gotcha. Interesting. I'm paying attention evolving. Nice. Yes,
[00:43:16] Keith Kouzmanoff: for sure. Yeah.
[00:43:18] Matthew Dunn: So they're, they're, they're, they're in their design sense and their email is very Amazon, but, but it's, it's good. Like. You can see what matters and focus on what matters, like process it quickly and stuff like that. Like they make an effective use of the channel.
[00:43:33] And I don't see, I don't see any incentive for Amazon to monkey with email standards. It does the job they needed to do just fine, which is probably a fair description of email writ large. That does the jobs you needed to do. Just fine. Thank you very much.
[00:43:47] Keith Kouzmanoff: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Just give me there. We put a man in the moon, right?
[00:43:52] Yeah. Well, arguably the capsule landed in the water anywhere. Nowhere they opened it up, they came out, they were alive. Right. Just, just send the email, just give me their okay. You can do it.
[00:44:07] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Just get me there. Just get me there. So when, when people get lit up about the notion of interactive email amps, non-success aside, I think, I don't think we'll get there.
[00:44:19] I really don't think we'll. Uh,
[00:44:21] Keith Kouzmanoff: it had a lot of promise. I like, I liked a lot of it when I saw it. It looked very, you know, promising, but I, the adaptability of it too, it just didn't get embraced. And, and maybe Bimini will be that way too. I'm not sure what that train looks like right now. And then maybe as a consumer, right.
[00:44:42] I'm looking at the Bimini logos and now I'm training myself. When I see a company spend a thousand dollars, I know it's a marketing company and just hit, delete. Maybe the Demi may be a curse to actually have, because I really, I really want to see an email from Matthew and my mom and my, um, you know, kids.
[00:45:04] Right. I don't want to see what I see the logo of Oop.
[00:45:08] Matthew Dunn: Uh, do we do, yeah, the, do we actually really want marketing emails? Whereas this just email marketers telling themselves we really want them.
[00:45:17] Keith Kouzmanoff: Right. And for most ma most mailbox varieties you can pay for that. You can pay for that, that spot up there in the web.
[00:45:26] You can actually, you don't even have to send an email, just call the bail out, to pay for it. Gladly, put your ad right there for
[00:45:34] Matthew Dunn: just pay for what sounds like. It sounds like you and I are somewhat on the same page in terms of the durability of the channel and the likely not dramatic evolution of the channel.
[00:45:43] Is that fair? Pretty fair. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's going to keep Chuck Liddell engine. It could little digital engine that could keep chugging along, but it's not going to turn into DeLorean or anything like that. Right. Just going to work the way it works.
[00:46:00] Keith Kouzmanoff: Yeah, I think so. I mean, um, it's, it's, it's not the best form of communication by far, right?
[00:46:10] There's much more efficient ways. There's cheaper ways. There's easier ways, you know, I mean, this thing's attached to your hand now more than bathroom, more people have computers in their phones and they have laptops now by a huge margin. Right? Yeah. So even the ecosystem of physical devices that's changed, but emails just as just trudge
[00:46:37] Matthew Dunn: dog.
[00:46:39] It has. I think there's a, I think there's an element of, um, comments or common carrier to email misses back to the topic you brought up earlier about RFCs and community-based and open standards. Like there's an element. Everyone can use that channel because that's not true messaging, messaging, messaging platforms, plural, it's not true.
[00:47:03] Um, there's no monopolist part to the front end of email. There's someone a monopolist parked at the back end of email, but you don't actually have to ask their permission. I don't have to ask a Google mother, may I to send my friend with the Gmail address an email, or to send my customer with a Gmail address and email?
[00:47:22] Like they haven't, they Google alphabet hasn't actually put up any direct pay us first. I would argue that the pro what's it called promotions tab promotions tab. There's there's, there's a cost and a drag factor for marketers from that mechanism. You end up paying deliverability guys to try to get out of that tab.
[00:47:46] Right. But it's not a direct gatekeeper.
[00:47:49] Keith Kouzmanoff: No. No, no. And if you're not, if you're giving him the promotion dabbing and not using annotations, shame
[00:47:55] Matthew Dunn: on you, shame on you. I would agree with you. Yes. Shame on you.
[00:48:01] Keith Kouzmanoff: Second thing. Glad you're in the promotional tab because there are far worse places to put you
[00:48:08] Matthew Dunn: fair point fair point.
[00:48:09] Yeah, that's true. That's true. Um, so
[00:48:13] Keith Kouzmanoff: let's break down the email, the whole email thing, right? We should've done. I'm going to, I'm going to steer the ship. Ready. Look, people don't need people like you. And they don't mean they don't mean any delivery, email delivery person out there, right? Because 95 of your 99 problems and email delivery is your data is clearly your data book.
[00:48:40] I had a friend moved to a. What do you move to? Ah, let's track, uh, one of the e-commerce for Magento, right? And I said to him, Hey man, look, you came from a large ESP and you just moved over there. I'm excited to hear how you like it. They just open up a new office, you know, they're growing very well.
[00:49:00] They're full of the kind of side. It's one of these one-off sales stuff, emails coming around. It's like, oh my God, it's night and day. And I'm like, what are you talking about? It's night and day. He's like, it's like 80% open rate, 90% open rate. I'm like, really? He goes, yeah, it's amazing. When people actually spend their hard-earned money on product, they actually want to see a tracking number.
[00:49:25] Come back from your company. I'm like hope, really. Actually want to see another email. They like our brand because they've actually bought money from us. And I asked them the challenge of questions. So the, what are you in since you're the deliverability consultant there at this e-com Clavio Ms. Drug company, what, what are the phone calls you're getting to me?
[00:49:51] And he said, oh, well, I get, I get calls from the e-com customer. You know, wondering why the 300 emails that he sent out, one of them bounce and the person at Hotmails hopping, Hotmail said the mailbox was full. Right. And how can he help? He needs to send an email to the mailboxes full function. And if he could talk to the postmaster at Hotmail to figure out how we can get just a little bit of more storage in there.
[00:50:20] Matthew Dunn: Yeah.
[00:50:24] Keith Kouzmanoff: Yeah. The surprising thing is when you email people that will want your email, you get a much better approach. You're you're, you're going to, by far, you're going to be, uh, you will not have people emailing you get off my list. Stop emailing me. Stop complaining about my IE, my unsubscribes not working, right?
[00:50:45] Yeah. Yeah. You'll get, um, you get a much better response. I think you'll make more money sending 300 emails into the inbox than you will 3 billion into the junk folder. Okay. If I get a dog name it clued you'll have one soon enough. Right. And if you're in the B2B world, Matthew where's most of your business coming from
[00:51:11] Matthew Dunn: in the B2B
[00:51:12] Keith Kouzmanoff: world.
[00:51:12] Yeah. B2B I I'm in the B2B world.
[00:51:16] Matthew Dunn: Not from email. I mean,
[00:51:19] Keith Kouzmanoff: from Facebook, from Instagram, from Tik TOK, LinkedIn, let me, I'm going to argue something somewhere else. You ready? Hmm. Word of mouth.
[00:51:29] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, you're right. Yeah. You're right.
[00:51:33] Keith Kouzmanoff: Yeah. So if you're in the B2B world, stop worrying about your email program. Go get everyone, you know, call your mom, call you dad, call your grandma, tell him you're in this world.
[00:51:47] Get your salespeople to call up, get your accounting people, the golf, get the receiving guy to call up, go to the golf course and start talking about what you're doing. Right. You're going to, you're going to spend far more, better resources into where that, where the sales are coming
[00:52:05] Matthew Dunn: from. Yeah, no, that's true.
[00:52:07] And as we, uh, as we start re-emerging from, uh, the couple of years of, uh, enforced cocoon and we can go to conferences and things like that and meet people and talk to customers. And so on, that would probably only access.
[00:52:23] Keith Kouzmanoff: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't want a customer that I, I picked up from an email. Right. I don't think I want anything remotely close to that right away.
[00:52:33] Go. Sorry. You should be knocking on my door. I don't want to knock on your door at all. In fact, I hope you never knock on my door. So
[00:52:44] Matthew Dunn: it's uh, oh, who is he? Who's the Austrian Austrian business theorist, ah, invented the term management. Can't believe I'm blanking on his name. I've got like four of his books just on the other side of that wall.
[00:52:58] The purpose of marketing is make is to make your product so good that your customers want it, words to that effect. Yeah.
[00:53:07] Keith Kouzmanoff: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:53:10] Matthew Dunn: Well, where, where, where for your business, you talked about business to business. Where do you see, uh, where do you see yourself taking inter seven over the next.
[00:53:19] Keith Kouzmanoff: Uh, I, um, I'm doing a lot of consulting right now, tip of the, uh, tip of the knife edge of the sword, trying to explore a lot of different, uh, projects.
[00:53:34] I've worked on so many different ones out there. I just find interest on new ideas, the GoDaddys and also the other 99 other pipe dreams that are out there. What, what can be done. Right. And I just love exploring new, new projects, new ideas that people have. It's just for me, it's I love seeing, um, I'm like a problem solver.
[00:54:00] I love puzzles. I love to play chess and I love to lose. I like to lose a lot because that means I work well
[00:54:09] Matthew Dunn: put, well put yeah. Yeah. You're avid chess player. Yeah. Oh yeah. Cool. Yeah. I got a friend who's a national master. He runs a very successful series of chess academies. And I always have this. I always have this sensation that he's about five sentences ahead of me in our conversations.
[00:54:30] Like he knew we were going to get there like Elliot got, dang it. Stop, play chess with everybody. It's the way he thinks after that much chess, I guess. Um, well that's cool. And, and, and, and a consultant that learns is the best kind.
[00:54:45] Keith Kouzmanoff: Yeah. I like to, I, to be honest with you, man, I've put myself out there where, you know, if the opportunity was right, I've actually put myself out there and said, you know what?
[00:54:55] Look, I'm making enough money right now. To be honest with you, I don't need to take this on, but the project that you're working on right now is so look so interesting that yeah. How do you think I can get it out? The other side of that is, guess what if I don't charge anything, they can't hit me up from a deadline either.
[00:55:17] So
[00:55:19] Matthew Dunn: that's a fair point. That's a fair point. Yeah. Cause you do have to deal with the pain factor of, uh, of clients and the larger they are and the more people are involved, the more of a pain they turn into. Right?
[00:55:31] Keith Kouzmanoff: Wow. Correct. Correct. A lot of them are battleships they're aircraft carriers, but they really need our jet skis that go out, test the water.
[00:55:41] What's the. Yeah, what's that?
[00:55:44] Matthew Dunn: What's the pups name? The dog,
[00:55:46] Keith Kouzmanoff: Leah, Leah has been the most, uh, verbal for us jumps. She can do tricks ready. Come on. Ah,
[00:55:59] Matthew Dunn: so it's good to say, somebody loves you. That's great. That's all I do all we're down to one after a menagerie. And uh, but uh, my, my, my dog is almost 16 and hanging in there, which is something like, so she's at the, yeah, I'm going to sleep.
[00:56:20] See you later. I'm asleep. Might take me a while to get up off the floor, but I'm cool. Thanks for hanging in there. Um, yeah, we'll miss her. We'll miss her when, when that changes, but it was a good run. Yeah. We had a whole menagerie winner when the kids were younger. It was great. Yeah. Yeah. Love it. You got a cat too, right?
[00:56:39] Keith Kouzmanoff: Briquettes one dog, four kids, six ex wives.
[00:56:46] Matthew Dunn: Speaking of banana trees.
[00:56:53] Keith Kouzmanoff: No, no, no. Well, let's
[00:56:55] Matthew Dunn: say I'll hit and on record. Cause this was a fun conversation. And if someone wants to get in the technical guts of email, they should listen to this conversation. That's what I say. So if someone wants to get in touch with Keith Cosmin off, where do they go to find you just email?
[00:57:11] Keith Kouzmanoff: Uh, they get an email gave me up on Twitter.
[00:57:15] You like going there? Don't
[00:57:16] Matthew Dunn: you? Uh, if I could be said to like any social network, LinkedIn. It's about, about the only one that qualifies. Most of them just bug me, bug me to death. And I ignore that
[00:57:29] Keith Kouzmanoff: LinkedIn has above everybody else.
[00:57:34] Matthew Dunn: Um, if you get too, you know, too yappy there, people will still actually delicious, delicious, or find a way to ignore you.
[00:57:45] And that the, the hand of the, uh, the hand of the administrator doesn't feel as heavy on LinkedIn. I mean, it probably is, but I do seem to see and hear from the people that I'm connected with most of the time and not who the heck is this and why am I, why is it on the screen in front of me? Because LinkedIn LinkedIn's manipulating like the flow of that heavy handedly.
[00:58:10] So it, it, it, it still manages to be business like, which I think is its purpose. So for that reason, For business?
[00:58:19] Keith Kouzmanoff: Well, on the email side, we didn't like LinkedIn so much. Yeah. Because LinkedIn stole your, took your address
[00:58:28] Matthew Dunn: book. Right, right. Move it out. Yeah.
[00:58:30] Keith Kouzmanoff: Yeah. You started contacting everyone in your address book that you had joined LinkedIn, not so friendly way of getting people to subscribe.
[00:58:40] So they spammed a bunch of unsuspecting people in there. It's like we became tolerant of it or is it because we used it enough that it, it we're okay with it spamming our address book for us. But we were, we, we didn't want to hit the send button ourselves. Oh God forbid. Oh God. But you'll do it. You're doing it for me.
[00:59:10] Hey, Hey. No, no, no blood, no foul.
[00:59:13] Matthew Dunn: Right by LinkedIn ID. They did this quenches and energies in my LinkedIn IDs is like 280,000. Like I've been on there. Oh, long time. Oh,
[00:59:26] Keith Kouzmanoff: what's the bell notification. Do the, what? The bell
[00:59:30] Matthew Dunn: notification. I saw that I saw that in your comment. I, I think if I have the thing up and live, when you do the bell, I actually do get an audible.
[00:59:39] I think that's what it does. I've not used it.
[00:59:42] Keith Kouzmanoff: No, no, no. The bell notification is, so if I look at your profile, right, and I want to see stuff from you, time, your posts put that bell to get notified that you do.
[00:59:54] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense. That's it sounds, sounds annoying. I haven't, I have not heard a bell on for anybody.
[01:00:02] Well, I mean, you, you've got to fight to keep your attention window to, to do, to actually do things yourself. It's a tough battle. Now it, between the inbox in LinkedIn and Twitter and so on. Ma'am so it's no wonder a lot of people don't get a whole lot done in the course of the day.
[01:00:21] Keith Kouzmanoff: Is that where you find yourself?
[01:00:23] Just,
[01:00:24] Matthew Dunn: oh, I just, I block it. It's like, nah, it's morning. Most of that crap is turned off. Cause I got stuff to get done, right?
[01:00:31] Keith Kouzmanoff: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You've been, been disciplined enough to
[01:00:37] Matthew Dunn: LinkedIn Facebook. Those are all voluntary. Right? You don't actually have to have them open. Right. Even your inbox, you don't actually have to have it running all the time.
[01:00:46] Right.
[01:00:47] Keith Kouzmanoff: You listened to this. Uh, a company, right? I would force my employees do use a Linux distribution desk. It would take them a week or two to learn it. Right. But I guarantee you they'd be more productive because out of the windows and Microsoft environment of all the social noise that you see in their apps, absolute a hundred percent, the browser still works the same as the browser and yours, but you have so many apps, noise noise for you.
[01:01:26] You, your browser itself as what? Hundreds of tabs open, right? Not to mention any apps that you have making noise for you as well. In fact, since I put you on the Linux distribution, that browser, you now use, you can't use half the apps anymore because it's not supporting,
[01:01:47] Matthew Dunn: that's an, that's an interesting choice.
[01:01:49] I would say something slightly different, um, asking the people in your company. To turn the, to turn the, the monitor off for half an hour, a day would be a damned interesting experiment. Turn the monitor off. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what do I do think
[01:02:13] Keith Kouzmanoff: I've heard this urban legends. See if you can find out if this is true or not, Matthew, uh, I think a lighting company had an experiment on and they wanted to run some stuff at her warehouse.
[01:02:27] Right. Have you heard
[01:02:29] Matthew Dunn: this before? Yeah, they, they, they turned the lights up. Productivity went up, they turned the lights down, productivity went out. It was the fact of change, not to change.
[01:02:37] Keith Kouzmanoff: No, no, no, no, no. It was the cameras. Interesting. They brought cameras in, they were giving breaks, higher breaks, lower breaks out productivity is up after the whole year.
[01:02:48] They said, oh, we have no idea. Productivity is just up. They took the cameras out. Productivity went down. Huh?
[01:02:55] Matthew Dunn: You've never heard of that one. If that's, if that's your definite, if your definition of productivity is positively effected by surveillance, we have a different definition.
[01:03:07] Keith Kouzmanoff: I say, I say, well, you could use this for yourself.
[01:03:11] Yeah. Yeah. If it's true, you could vibe, stream yourself working
[01:03:16] Matthew Dunn: at oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We we're we're remote. Like we're very distributed virtual company. We had a, so should we get everyone to leave the camera up all the time? I said no freaking way.
[01:03:29] Keith Kouzmanoff: Like just put it above our
[01:03:31] Matthew Dunn: heads. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
[01:03:33] You know, what is it? Flutter his fingers. Do it. Because the, yeah, no. Yeah. That's a, that's, that's a conundrum. How about, how
[01:03:41] Keith Kouzmanoff: about for 10 minutes? Every hour on the hour, just to, or how about for 30 seconds? A predictability one snapshot.
[01:03:56] Matthew Dunn: I don't know that it would make me more productive, but your, your, your, the thesis you've got from the, from the factories, it might, huh?
[01:04:03] Keith Kouzmanoff: I, I also believe listen to this ready that the Russians, uh, were, uh, or the Americans wanting to write upside down in space and, uh, the American salt. I know that's a myth, but I still believe it's true, but
[01:04:19] Matthew Dunn: the zillion dollars spent on the pen versus brushes.
[01:04:25] Just use the pencil.
[01:04:26] Keith Kouzmanoff: I know it's an urban legend,
[01:04:27] Matthew Dunn: but I still think it's true. It's nice. Decent, decent, urban legend. Yeah. We're, we're done with, we're done handing out compliments to Russia for awhile in this particular moment in history, but yeah, yeah, yeah. Messy, messy. Well, let's wrap it up. My friend that was really wonderful to talk with you.
[01:04:47] My guest, for those of you listening has been Keith Cosmin off@interseven.com. Thank you.
[01:04:54] Keith Kouzmanoff: Thank you.
[01:04:55]