It seems that we need a better communication tool than the listserve. It is hard to design one. But such a tool could be important in VRM.
E.g. a VRM list owner could add a tag from a controlled list, say "Personal Cloud", and members could subscribe to whatever tags they choose, and get only one copy of the message. And uncontrolled tags might be added by anyone. But then in a complex "conversation" with many branches, just who gets which replies? Did Google need to deal with any tough cases or unexpected consequences about who gets what replies in Gmail? With tags, does it get worse? What if someone is participating in the middle of dozens of separate threads of a conversation, then changes the tags they had chosen?
Could one subscribe to multiple tags, in a wiki instead of an email list? Could users see colored or graphic displays showing the likely higher or lower priorities for them? What should or should not be invisible to them? Could senders graphically see (and edit if they wish) exactly who will get their draft message? How would private wiki threads within larger discussions behave?
Has forum or conferencing software found better ways -- even when it's not all one meeting, but private communications and submeetings are encouraged, and allowed to fade in and out any time?
In my junior high school in the '50s, a science textbook said that the ordinary (blade) screwdriver had already been so optimized that further improvements were unlikely. But soon the Phillips became popular. Let alone the square kind more used in Canada.
Most people use their computers almost 100% for communication (if you include one-way communication like art and entertainment). Any significant improvement in communication tools would be important. So it's worth thinking about what tools could make our own list-communication problems disappear.
A good semi-private-conversation tool could contribute to VRM, or personal clouds. People make buying decisions socially in most cases. And they may get tired of Facebook having so much influence or control over something as important as their friends, acquaintances, and social conversation.
John