There’s this company called Seriosity. They produce some sort of software that integrates with MS Outlook to help you sort through your email more efficiently. Specifically, they have a virtual currency system using a currency they call Serios. They use their virtual currency like this:

  1. Each user generates for himself a fixed amount of Serios per X time period. It’s equal for all users.
  2. When you send an email, you can attach a certain amount of Serios to it.
  3. Your email client can/will display the emails with the greatest number of Serios attached on top.
  4. You keep the Serios attached to emails sent to you you (though presumably they’ll have to implement some sort of tax or other way to take currency out of the system as otherwise they’ll have massive inflation problems).

Essentially, then, they’re creating a currency of attention. The more emails you get, the more Serios you’re likely to get, giving you the ability to send more Serios to other people than you would be able to otherwise.

I’d never heard of this until today, when I got an email from an acquaintance (as he’s been outed now, it’s Associate Professor Edward Castronova…amusingly, he studies virtual stuff). He had sent an email to a lot of people he knew letting people know that from now on he’d be prioritizing whom he responded to by how many Serios were attached to the emails to him.

Here was my response:

“If I didn’t respect you and know that you mean well, I think my response to getting the email you sent would be to be a little pissed.
To be told that someone is going to delay answering my emails unless I attach some random virtual currency to it prompts a combination of incredulity and just general annoyance at the implication that getting an email from me isn’t important based on the content of the email and the recipient’s relationship with me. I don’t pay people I have relationships with to talk to me.

I have two active companies. I get and send as much email as anyone. This system would cause me to have to spend more time answering and sending emails than I do now. Why do I want to worry about how many Serios to allocate, and why would I permit the sender to determine how important an email is to me?

For instance, a random recruiter mails me. To him, it’s very important. I’ve gotten three emails previously that day from people just like him in other companies though. While I appreciate his point of view, from my point of view it ranks very low on the importance scale. Why would I want to permit him to determine what I prioritize my life around? I know what’s important to me. The sender does not.

Beyond that, the whole thing is just demeaning. Business is built on relationships as much as anything else. Seriosity is seriously mistaken if it thinks that people want to have to worry about ‘bidding’ to get the attention of business partners/employees/superiors. I find the idea of participating in it…yucky.

–matt, from the bottom of your inbox.”

So what do you think? Am I missing a bigger picture here? Is this something you’d want to participate in? I just can’t imagine spending the mental overhead on what amounts to a game that just gets in my way when I use email almost entirely as a business tool.

P.S. Have a look at the comments thread. They’re almost entirely negative.

P.P.S. There are a couple of threads on Terranova (both of whose comments sections are broken) started by Edward on this. In the first, he defended his decision to ignore people who aren’t using Serios. In the second, he decided that he did the big thing, apologized for offending people, and agreed that it was a mistake to try this.