Yes, Email is Your Social Graph

I know this has been written before but in the past few days it hit home for me as I’ve contacted my network to update them with professional information. Email is your social graph.

In less than 2 years I’ve collected over 800 emails. This is just the list of people I’ve emailed not people that have emailed me. Everyone I’ve communicated with over the past 22 months — that’s 36 people a month or one new contact a day! I’m awed by the enormity. I thought of not mass emailing EVERYONE, and in fact I did selectively leave off folks for various reasons but in this situation the rules of mass-email applies. ROI = Reach.

Somewhere in here is a social app waiting to be born.

Also of note — Gmail has a limit of 500 sends a day. If you break that limit (as I did) you get penalized. In my case it was 24 hours of being able to send anything. I can’t tell you how frustrating that was.

Thanks to everyone for their well wishes on the new venture. Somehow I’ve forgotten with this being my third start-up in the past decade how much work it is. I also forgot how exciting it is and how that more than makes up for hard work.