INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Hot startup Superhuman has been getting some backlash, as often happens when someone notices the precise methodology that a startup is using
that Superhuman tracks email you send and receive and gives you tools to help you manage it
They do it on your behalf, but without the permission of the recipient.You can read a review of the service by Lucas Matney, who spent six
months with it, here on TC.The best thing about all of this defense against the backlash chatter coming in is that the backlash itself is
really not specious at all
People are literally just pointing out what they do, which is track email
Every single email that comes in from a BRAND has some sort of this stuff happening
As do all websites (including this one)
People are just not used to it being applied to a consumer product as intimate as personal email, and that sort of in-your-face use of
commerce-grade tracking is perking up ears.A few years back a startup founder with a suite of productivity apps (not Superhuman) asked me
about this cool new feature they were planning on shipping: email tracking for senders, built right in
Read receipts and action items and all kinds of cool-sounding stuff to make your life easier
He was asking what I thought of it, and whether Apple would have an issue with it if they shipped it on the store.I told him it sounded like
a great idea, but that I would be very cautions of actually rolling it out because it was impossible to get verification from the other side
before you began tracking them
There was no opt-in.I advised him to look at the way Apple handles it, where email tracking happens outside the body of the email in a sort
through their own servers, I choose not to employ any tracking apps and set up my emails not to auto-display images
startup with this at the core of their business
It seems like the founders have thought a lot about this and have decided that this tracking is good and defensible
on a startup that has become successful
Superhuman is very new, but very buzzy
And, as I said above, the backlash mostly consists of people highlighting their marquee features in detail
detailed explanations of what they want to accomplish and what the origins of the product and team are
(We even covered the last startup to use the name Superhuman for a productivity app.)The tracking has come up in our stories, but I think
that people are just more willing to be skeptical of this stuff given the way that the last couple of years have gone
This is something that we have found happening with a lot of privacy issues recently.In fact, the most astute criticism of the way
Superhuman uses tracking came in a post by designer Mike Davidson, who has spent a lot of time working on large systems that have dangerous,
as well as exciting, potential
But there are clearly components of the way that they implemented their key feature that have potential for abuse.It is, and I do find it a
bit amusing that I have to say this in twenty-nineteen, OK for people to want to discuss this and to examine the trade offs in a product
to be mis-used to manipulate audiences at scale is that not enough people were listening to the conversations that were had about these
possibilities early enough.In context, it is very hard to argue that a genuine moment of thoughtfulness about any startup that has traction,
raises significant capital and is aiming to have the most users possible see the world from its point of view is a bad thing.
