There's nothing new under the sun ;-)

[Richi Jennings]

X.400 had it (although, like most things X.400-y, it was implemented
inconsistently).

It's presence in X.400 begat its presence in MIXER (RFC2156).

And then there's this thread from 2008:
http://www.imc.org/ietf-822/mail-archive/threads.html#06323

[Richi Jennings]

Does anyone know why previous attempts died? It might be worth polling
Steve Kille for his thoughts.

But, off the top of my head, I don't see the motivation for big
providers like Hotmail and Yahoo to support it in their MUAs. Is there
a clamoring for it from their userbase? Advertisers might like it, but
can Hotmail et al monetize that desire?

[Joshua Baer]

On Jan 17, 2011, at 5:44 PM, Richi Jennings wrote:

> Does anyone know why previous attempts died? It might be worth polling
> Steve Kille for his thoughts.
>

I don't know Steve - do you have his contact info? We should invite him to this list.

> But, off the top of my head, I don't see the motivation for big
> providers like Hotmail and Yahoo to support it in their MUAs. Is there
> a clamoring for it from their userbase? Advertisers might like it, but
> can Hotmail et al monetize that desire?

I've been met with a warm response when I've talked to mail providers about it so far. I think its more relevant today than ever with the buzz around daily deal sites like Groupon. We could kickstart this with the daily deal sites and some others sending the headers and then one of the large providers.

The other thing that's different now is that its possible to implement this without the direct assistance of the providers. It would be possible for a third party to implement this functionality for Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Aol and others as a way to bootstrap the process.

~Josh

[Richi Jennings]

This is why Josh is an serial entrepreneur and I'm a miserable old
curmudgeon. Harrumph.

Anyway, I've dropped an invite to Steve (he was a primary author of
MIXER and has forgotten more about X.400 than I ever knew).

[Joshua Baer]

Ha!

~Josh