Do you like getting email newsletters? A few years ago, my answer to this question would’ve been a silent stare that belied seething rage. I was receiving so much email that the thought of getting more non-work related messages filled me with dread.
Recently, this has changed; I find myself signing up for — and getting value from — email newsletters again. What’s different? Two things. For one, more of my work communication is happening to pseudo-synchronous environments like Slack and Messages.app, so my email inbox isn’t as crowded as before. For another, fewer people I want to hear from publish blogs of their own anymore. Where I formerly used to get updates from them through my RSS reader, these days the ones that still write longer posts do it through either social media or environments such as Medium, where their voices become buried among others selected “just for me” by algorithms that still leave a lot to be desired.
Fortunately, a few of these folks have set up email newsletters to aggregate their writing. Here are a few I’m currently enjoying:
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Abi Jones’s Locutious Letters
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Cool Tools’s Recomendo
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Craig Mod’s Roden Explorers
Given how much value I’m getting from email newsletters, and the fact that I have a book coming out, I’ve set up a newsletter of my own. I’ve called it Informa(c)tion, and you can sign up here. Informa(c)tion is a low-volume, high signal-to-noise way for you to get a dose of information architecture goodness, and stay up to date on what’s happening with Living in Information. I hope you check it out, and look forward to hearing what you think about it.