The Elements
There are many components that come together to make the micron-verse of 2025 a reality: messages, microns, micronbox, mu and MyToday. Let’s discuss each of them and how they all fit together.
Messages are what brands send to us, their customers, to inform us of all that’s new and their special offers. While they can wait for us to visit their website or open their app, pushing messages to us is a way to inform and nudge us to action. In today’s world, it has become intrusion and nags. We have no control on the inflow of messages – it just seems like a never-ending stream of communications that we cannot control. Sending push notifications costs nothing and emails cost just a few paise. The balance of power is firmly with brands as they flood our inboxes with ever increasing numbers of messages to rise above every other brand trying to do the same. The net result is that brands have taught us to ignore their messages as is evident in the low open and click rates on the messages we get.
Microns help solve the problem. Microns are short and identified with a µ thus ensuring we know before opening that the message will not take us more than 15-30 seconds to consume. They are also linked to a clear opt-in enforced by the micronbox, thus ensuring a zero-spam world. Microns also come with incentives for our attention and action – and these are clearly stated in the Subject line.
Micronbox is where the messages are aggregated together. The micronbox can, with our permission, collect all the messages from our Gmail inbox, our SMS inbox and the app push notifications that come to the mobile. It looks and feels like any other inbox but with some interesting server-side properties that make it feel magical. AI at the backend watches which microns we open and when, and thus offers us those at the top of the list. Brands we ignore or whose microns we open less frequently are relegated to the bottom of the list. At any point of time, only the latest brand micron is visible – older unread microns from the brand are hidden until we choose to see them.
Mu (me+you) is the virtual currency for attention and action. Mu is created by us – when we act on microns, akin to how bitcoin is created through the computation and mining process. Mu is paid for by brands and transferred to us when we absorb their messages; brands do not spend Mu on messages that are ignored. (Given that Mu is backed by a brand payment, I wonder if that makes it a ‘stablecoin’!) Brands can offer differential Mu to different customer cohorts because each micron can be customised. Mu is the world’s first currency for the funnel prior to transactions. It works across brands and thus is easy for us to track. Every micron has the Mu triad in the subject: the total Mu for each of us (and thus is impossible for a bad actor to spoof since this number is only known to the platform and us), Mu to be earned for opening, and Mu to be earned for all the actions performed for the tasks mentioned in the micron. Once earned, Mu can be traded, gifted and bartered.
MyToday is the platform that makes it all happen. Brands publish microns via MyToday to be delivered to the micronbox. MyToday ensures that only brands with our permission are allowed to engage with us. It also manages the Mu and enables redemption at the Mushop.
Taken together, these 5 elements help us construct the new world of brand-customer communications and engagement – the micron-verse.
