Galloping registrations for Mailbox app taps worldwide email frustration

Within 24 hours of putting up a video demo about a new email app, Mailbox, that promises to tame the email inbox, 250,000 people registered to be part of the service.

After reading about the app in FastCompany this morning, I registered. There are 345,000 people in front of me, give or take, but the incredible thing is that in the past five minutes, I have seen 5,951 people register after me. The number is ticking quickly. Since I wrote that sentence, there are now 6,212 after me.

The inundation of registrations for the app shows just how desperate we all are to cut down the average 2.5 hours spent on email every day. A tap on the status icon of the app reveals the explanation for the company’s pile of registrations. “We have designed the Mailbox service to scale indefinitely, and have done a much load testing as we can,” the company explains. “But we don’t know what we don’t know, so we’re using registrations to add people gradually.”

In the period of time since I registered, five people have received their inbox. Allowing for five people to get a mailbox every 10 minutes, it should be a year and a half before I get my service. However, I have been assured that things will speed up. “At first the pace may seem slow. This is by design. If we run into unexpected snags, we may even stop filing reservations temporarily. But as the service grows, we should be able to dramatically increase the pace …” the company says.

Bummer, but there is good news: there are now 8,944 people behind me!