There is a simple premise behind the design of Shortmail.

What single change could we make to the design of email that would have the most impact for the most users?

After considering many possibilities, we felt that a simple character-limit would produce the most positive benefits. We have now launched Shortmail to the world, and based on the massive global response, we think we struck a chord.

Some have wondered whether a character limit can really work in e-mail. We think it can, and our mission is to change email everywhere forever with our simple message. People are at their wit’s end with email, and they are tuning it out. If we want to make email useful again, it must support some notion of length limitation. The time to act is now.

We propose this simple addition to every email header.

X-Character-Limit: 500
X-Reply-Character-Limit: 500

If these headers are present, it means that the message was generated by a mail client that respects character counts.

• X-Character-Limit indicates that the message was created with the specified maximum number of characters.
• X-Reply-Character-Limit indicates that the sender is requesting that replies be kept to within the specified maximum number of characters.

That’s it. Of course, the specific numbers can be whatever a vendor, or sender, prefers. However, we think 500 will emerge as a natural standard. It’s a good length. We have been testing it for some time. 99% of business communications fits within that limit.

With these headers in place, web, mobile and desktop software can detect and support both in-app character counters as well as hard character limits.

So what’s in the way? We need to get mobile, web, and desktop mail client vendors to support these two simple email headers. Raise awareness. If you want to help, send a Tweet.

Click here to Tweet this now: “Apple, Google, RIM, Microsoft: Size matters! Please support the X-Character-Limit headers proposed by shortmail.com. http://bit.ly/jIsYt4″

Together, with this one simple addition, we can change email for the better!