This article was published on August 9, 2010

Enjoy anonymous email? Play email roulette with Invisible Note.


Enjoy anonymous email? Play email roulette with Invisible Note.

Chatroulette is a service I’ve never used.  Why?  Probably my aversion to sausage and video chatting.

One thing I don’t mind so much is email.  It can be a burden at times, but for me it certainly beats direct interaction with other humans either by phone, face to face communication, or video chats.  Enter a bare bones social experiment from DreamHost called Invisible Note.

Invisible Note is an interesting idea.  In essence it is a game of bouncing email/chain mail.  All you have to do is send out an email to any address @invisiblenote.com.  That’s it.

Then you play the waiting game. If another user sends an email to the same address as you, they get your note, and you get theirs, in addition to each receiving the email addresses both of you sent your Invisible Note’s from.

I sent an Invisible Note to a made up address, and unfortunately have yet to receive a reply.   What does this mean for me?  My message will sit there until some day somebody else sends another email to that mailbox.

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According to Invisible Note, when that day comes, “You will then become friends for life.”  Also noting that “It could be DECADES before you get a reply! But we’ll keep your note safe in the meantime, we promise!”

How could the service get better?  The potential for spamming is a real concern.  Spam bots could simply send out emails and capture a tremendous amount of email addresses.  Perhaps Captcha or another security measure to prevent such spamming will be instituted to prevent any such issues.

That said, Invisible Note is an interesting idea, easy to do and all about fun.  Give it a try  and see if you, unlike me, receive a response.

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