Ned, On 15/06/2014 08:21, Ned Freed wrote: >> Ned, > >> On 15/06/2014 02:42, ned+ietf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: >> ... >>> Some data to support this conclusion: >> [that webmail is not dominant] >>> http://emailclientmarketshare.com/ > >> Hmm. I was curious about what those numbers really measure. >> Judging by http://litmus.com/email-analytics, it seems that >> they refer to a sample of emails that (a) contained a specific >> HTML snippet and were (b) opened as HTML by the clients and >> (c) by implication, had been sent via a mailing list. > > Litmus is a service for people who send out bulk mail and want to track > whether or not it's seen, and when it's seen what client is used to see it. > >> It seems >> very likely to me that the sample consisted of spam. > > Actually, it's unlikely in the extreme. Spammers are into volume, they don't > care about tracking analytics and aren't going to pay a company like Litmus to > perform such a service. But there are a hell of a lot of legitimate bulk email > senders out there who do care about the effectiveness of their mail, and have > the money to pay for such things. I think I'll avoid stating an opinion about the boundary between legitimate bulk email and spam, because that would lead to far too much dissent, pretty much regardless of what I said ;-) >> I'm >> not sure that the numbers reflect unbiased statistics, unless >> you're a spammer. In any case they don't indicate how many >> people open email in plain text mode (which I alway do if >> possible, precisely to avoid embedded code). > > Well, I think it's up to you to show that a significant fraction of the > email-reading public prefers to read HTML mail without resolving any of the > links, and that missing out on that fraction significantly biases such data. I believe I am in a tiny, tiny minority by running my email client in 'plain text' mode unless I receive a message that is incomprehensible without setting 'original html' mode. >> That said, they certainly show that one size doesn't fit all. > > Which was the main point. Indeed. Brian