(First of all, I apologize for the length of this in advance)

The point of this "blog" is to not only ask why there isn't a private messaging function on this site, but also discuss how important it could be as a feature.

There are 3 basic ways I can currently contact another member of Threadless. Keep in mind, that all of which are more difficult than a simple private message. One, if said person "happens" to have and use AIM then they can leave their screen name, and then you can reach them through that if you "happen" to have and use it also. I personally don't know anyone who uses it (maybe MSN Messenger, but not AIM). Two, if you happen to leave your email address in your profile. But as most people know, leaving your email address on a random site is a sure fire way to get your name added to plenty of spam lists. Not only that, but if I wanted to go through the trouble of actually emailing somebody, they then know my email address and some people can get picky about who has their email address. Me included. Third reason, and possibly the most annoying... Starting an entire blog (for all to see in the Blog Forum section) just to talk to a single person, or ask one person a question.

So how do you resolve all of these problems? Simple. Add a private messaging system to this site (and here's the SIMPLE part!) - It would work EXACTLY the way the Blog Forum already works! But instead the only person(s) who could read it would be to who you sent it to. Here's an example of what it could look like when you've got some messages in your inbox...



Simple. Clean. And you wouldn't even need to clutter things up with options like "Outbox", "Sentbox", "Savebox" or any of that. I know this site is really stripped down and simple to use, so it wouldn't be a problem. And when you clicked on that number (right next to your name) it would bring you to a section that looked JUST like your profile page looks right now. Your profile pic on the left (submitted designs under that obviously) and private messages (topic and then message) off to the right. And here's the genius part! When somebody gets your private message and you reply back and forth a few times it saves all of the them in the ONE original message, blog, thingy. Much like combining how Gmail works (saving replys in 'conversations' rather than seperate emails) and how your current Blog Forum works now. I guess you could consider it Private Blogging between 2 (or maybe 3 or 4??) people. God this would work so well it almost hurts.

So! It's example time. Let's say I want to ask "User X" a question about how he got his shirt design to look that way. Well I don't want to bother everyone and post it in the forum for all to see, and I don't want to leave it as a comment on one of his shirt designs and clutter things up with a personal question. So what would I do, I'd click "Send User X a Private Message." I'd give it a Title, type out my question, then hit send. Done. Then when he got around to answering my question he wouldn't even need to make a new message, just add a reply in the box (just like leaving a comment) and it would send the same message back to me and then it'd say that I have 1 new message in my Inbox. So on and so forth.

Actually, I'm sure some of you have AudioScrobbler accounts? They've got a private messaging feature and not only is it not needed as much as this site needs one, but this site has the HUGE advantage of keeping all replies in the same message. Also, I forgot to mention that discarding messages would be as easy as discarding blog entries.

Okay, so I'll stop there. And for the Threadless workers, PLEASE voice your opinion on this in here or elsewhere (I'll also be sending you emails with all of these questions and ideas). Thanks for reading all of this! I'm just trying to help make this site even better than it already is.