Email overload? Try Priority Inbox

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/email-overload-try-priority-inbox.html

by niyazpk • 16 years ago

280 112 16 years ago

gmailblog.blogspot.com

kwamenum86• 16 years ago

Ironic considering Eric Schmidt disputed the existence of communication overload fairly recently.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/12/eric-schmidt-mobile-is-the-...

jedc• 16 years ago

Perhaps because he's been dogfooding Priority Inbox? :)

Rhapso• 16 years ago

This goes a few steps past just reading keywords out of my emails to place ads. This requires Gmail to have intimate knowledge of my emailing habits. While from the software point of view this is not scary, the "profile" data has to be stored someplace other then my machine and it makes me wonder who can read it. Will Google have to surrender my psychological profile upon a subpoena? This is sarcastic, but a real concern. Even if I somehow am magicked into trusting Google, no amount of magic will allow me to trust the government, and anything Google knows, the government has right to.

jeffgreco• 16 years ago

"the data has to be stored someplace other then my machine and it makes me wonder who can read it"

Data being stored someplace other than your machine is the reason why people use webmail.

psranga• 16 years ago

I think he meant the "psychological profile" data, not his email text.

Mystalic• 16 years ago

I've been using Priority Inbox for the last few days. I don't know how I managed my email without it.

fookyong• 16 years ago

That promotional video is exceptionally well-executed.

walkon• 16 years ago

Wish I could watch it. Am I the only one who can't stream a full video from YouTube half the time? Either it doesn't start at all, or quits streaming half way through.

jessriedel• 16 years ago

This is at least half of my youtube experience.

barrkel2• 16 years ago

I get a lot of stuttering due to Youtube throttling bandwidth usage at the server end. Videos start great, but after that initial buffer is done with, it often inches forward too slowly to keep up with the playback rate.

When this happens, and I really want to watch the video, I use FlashGot in Firefox to download the FLV directly and play it back in Media Player Classic.

slug• 16 years ago

You could always use an add-on to download the video files.

I'm a fan of Video DownloadHelper - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006/ for firefox.

It usually works for any website that embeds media into flash.

johndbritton• 16 years ago

I've been doing this sort of thing ever since they introduced the Multiple Inboxes lab feature. It wasn't Gmail's logic, it was my own in a series of complex filters. Here's a screen grab from February 2009: http://www.flickr.com/photos/johndbritton/3257013239/sizes/o...

davidedicillo2• 16 years ago

Yeah, I've been doing something similar myself as well http://cl.ly/96b0317654f02721b1bd

Twisol• 16 years ago

I just use a couple extra tags and filter certain messages to them, archiving them immediately. I only have this for my mailing lists right now, though.

houseabsolute• 16 years ago

Ooo, I've been looking forward to when I can use this for my personal account too. It takes some training but it's highly effective after a while.

ALee• 16 years ago

#28 of YC's Ideas They'd Like to Fund

"Fixing email overload. A lot of people, including me, feel they get too much email. A solution would find a ready market. But the best solution may not be anything as obvious as a new mail reader.

Related problem: Using your inbox as a to-do list. The solution is probably to acknowledge this rather than prevent it."

fjabre• 16 years ago

Isn't Etacts trying to solve this problem?

gregschlom• 16 years ago

Yeah, I was trying to solve that as well with my startup... Priority Inbox definitely implements a few of our "killer features". Will be interesting to see if we can compete with Google on this :)

acangiano3• 16 years ago

Have you thought what your next startup is going to be about? :-P

davidedicillo2• 16 years ago

I was actually already using my inbox as todo list with the Multiple Inboxes lab feature, using labels "Need Reply" or "To Do" for the emails and use filters to address them to the multiple inboxes.

bostonvaulter22• 16 years ago

I wish the shortcut keys (such as j and k) would reach down into the multiple inboxes. Unfortunately they only work on the top inbox.

xiongchiamiov2• 16 years ago

Similar here. Second inbox is mailing lists, third is "other crap" - newsletters, email from Facebook, etc. - the kind of thing that I want to have available, but don't want to see most of the time.

spicyj2• 16 years ago

This sort of feature always makes me sad that they announce features before rolling them out to everyone. Now I can't wait for it to show up in my account.

es• 16 years ago

I can't agree more. I was really disappointed when found out that I need to wait for release. Most likely I'll forgot unless it will appear on top of HN next week.

avar3• 16 years ago

They announce this sort of thing as "New Features" in the GMail interface itself. So you don't need HN to remind you.

bostonvaulter22• 16 years ago

Yeah, I really with this was a google labs feature so I could try it out right now. Although the fact that it is not a lab feature means they are taking it quite seriously.

malbiniak• 16 years ago

It should be along shortly, if not already. I've got it in my personal gmail account and my apps account.

michaelhalligan• 16 years ago

After four drafts of my response, I think it can be summed up in one sentence: Minus the paranoia, murder, and mayhem, Ted Kaczynski might have been on to something.

rsingel• 16 years ago

Having tested this the last few days, I would raise a rebel army if Google tried to take it away.

davidw• 16 years ago

Gmail is starting to remind me more and more why I like free software so much: I want the ability to hack it to do what I want. The feature I'm desperate for is to have it use specific email addresses with specific people: dedasys.com for most correspondence, gmail with family, maybe hecl.org for that mailing list, and so on. Sure you can change it manually, but it's a pain in the neck.

The reason I don't run my own email any more though, is that the real killer feature of gmail is the spam detection. That makes me willing to put up with their control of my mail.

spicyj2• 16 years ago

I'm not sure if this is identical to Gmail's filtering, but Google has SaaS spam filtering:

http://www.google.com/postini/email.html

roryokane• 16 years ago

At least Gmail, unlike Yahoo Mail (which I’m currently stuck with), allows free POP and IMAP access. If Gmail doesn’t support something, you can hook whatever email client you want to it. There is probably an open-source mail program you can write a plugin for to do what you want.

TheSOB884• 16 years ago

I think it is possible for you to do this. Greasemonkey for Firefox allows you to run Javascript that modifies the way pages work. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748/

Actually, I found a script that claims to do exactly what you need! http://userscripts.org./scripts/show/71859 It says you have to edit the source to change which emails go where, but it seems much better than nothing.

mike-cardwell9• 16 years ago

Thunderbird + the "Virtual Identity" addon lets you do that

pinko• 16 years ago

Sounds a lot like SaneBox, except with only one level of priority instead of a few graduated ones.

ptn• 16 years ago

Counter-productive byproduct: I'm gonna be checking my email until I see that alert come up...

marcamillion• 16 years ago

Anyone know who made that video?

barmstrong3• 16 years ago

Was wondering same thing, it was very well done.

TheSOB884• 16 years ago

I'm guessing it's internal, put together by Google people on their 20% hours.

Technical people can be creative, too! At least, that's what I'd like to think.

tierack• 16 years ago

I'm guessing it's internal, but made one of their marketing teams. (http://www.notesondesign.net/inspiration/advertising/google-...)

patio112• 16 years ago

This will make me very, very happy. It matches almost exactly with my workflow for using email: certain people (customers) get written back as soon as I check email, other people get responses as time permits, and then I get some notifications which I don't typically act on but do appreciate having surfaced somewhere (e.g. "You sold something" or "Here's your receipt.").

revorad• 16 years ago

Stuart Roseman's startup SaneBox already does something similar - http://www.sanebox.com. As a paid service, I guess they are in for some competition.

tremendo2• 16 years ago

Anybody else got the auto-playing music? For a while couldn't figure out where it was coming from, then I saw the red sign for the new Priority Inbox and at first selected "No thanks" but that did nothing, and not until I accepted to turn it on did the music stop.

A bug? or some Google's programmer idea of being "helpful" or "funny"? I did not appreciate it.

DrewHintz• 16 years ago

What browser are you using?

tremendo2• 16 years ago

Google Chrome 5.0.375.125 beta on Ubuntu Lucid

barmstrong3• 16 years ago

Yep I encountered it too (using Chrome on mac). Looks like it was a bug. Pretty funny though. There is probably some programmer getting seriously heckled right now in a late night hackathon over at Google. Wonder if they've broken out the drinks yet.

imrehg• 16 years ago

Had the same thing. Seems like enabling it in another browser will disable the ad, so you can go back using Chrome. Haven't tried disabling afterwards to see whether the ad comes back, though...

I seriously thought my account been hacked and someone's playing a practical joke on me...

studer3• 16 years ago

There's a pinned answer over at their support forum, so it's not just you:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/label?lid=613f70...

Didn't they do something similar with the Pacman thing? Sounds like they don't have enough computers with working speakers...

jgilliam• 16 years ago

This is gonna send shockwaves through the email marketing industry.

acangiano3• 16 years ago

I believe it will have an impact on the email marketing industry. I can see lots of marketer getting worried. I think however that it will have the worst impact on companies that use their lists in a way that annoy users.

If you simply offer a useful service (and I believe I do with the recently launched http://anynewbooks.com) I don't think you are going to be terribly impacted. People will always open emails that they find valuable whether they are newsletters or not.

If all you offer is low quality bacn though, you're going to hate this new Gmail feature.

studer3• 16 years ago

If you annoy people, chances are that you'll end up in their spam filters anyway. This is for the kind of stuff that people leave in their inboxes to read later (or, if they're organized, auto-forward to some "read later" folder).

marklabedz• 16 years ago

How long until Google monetizes Priority status?

jgrahamc2• 16 years ago

Well, that kills my idea of creating a commercial service based on my fast classifier to do automatic labeling of messages in GMail.

mcherm• 16 years ago

No it doesn't. You just need to execute better than Google did. For instance, why have 3 classes ("normal", "bacn", and "spam"), why not have 7 or 8 categories instead? How about a better tool for training the classifier so it conforms to your own use? Competition is HARDER when Google gets in the mix, but it doesn't mean you have to give up!

jgrahamc2• 16 years ago

You are right. And what I want to do is automatically label the email in arbitrary ways just like POPFile does. Hmm. Maybe I really should work on this since it would work for anyone who has an IMAP accessible account.

chrismiller2• 16 years ago

Hopefully this will be available for Google Apps hosted email.

sl956• 16 years ago

It is already. Oddly enough it is already available on my Google Apps account but not yet on my standard Gmail account.

studer3• 16 years ago

It says so in the announcement, so that's pretty likely.

"Priority Inbox will be rolling out to all Gmail users, including those of you who use Google Apps, over the next week or so."

chrismiller2• 16 years ago

Don't know how I missed that. Thanks.

petercooper• 16 years ago

I've had a similar feature (without the training part) in GMail for a while now. GMail Labs has a feature called something like "Multi Inbox". It shows other searches/labels of your choice on the front page. I set it up to show Drafts, Starred and a "To Do" label and have been running a system much like this shows, just prioritizing stuff on the fly. Given you can see drafts and such stuff, this might even be a better alternative for some.

kapranoff• 16 years ago

Interesting. People who actively use Multiple Inbox lab in GMail usually have the same or similar configuration. (Starred, Drafts and label:toread for incoming links — that's mine).

Looks like a pattern.

aresant• 16 years ago

This is a BRILLIANT feature that I hope stimulates somebody on HN to build around Outlook.

GMAIL hovers around 5% of email client usage.

Outlook still owns somewhere between 35 - 43%.

MSFT was moving in this direction and had a decent solution out a few years back called Email Prioritizer.

Of course, they tossed before it made it out of labs.

Xobni is too complex IMO, what's so compelling about Google's system is how simple it is - it just works, it fits right in. Nice job.

http://www.officelabs.com/projects/emailprioritizer/Pages/De...

http://visibleranking.com/2010/05/most-popular-email-clients...

barmstrong3• 16 years ago

Yep - their implementation looks great (at least at first glance).

jlouis• 16 years ago

I think Gmail has much more than 5% of the market. It may be that Outlook is installed on 35-45% of all computers, but nobody currently has numbers for the use of the application. If I can get away with it, I prefer forwarding mails so I don't have to deal with Outlook.

And so should all sane companies: Outlook waste their time.

smackfu• 16 years ago

GMail isn't even that popular for webmail. It's just that it's insanely popular among the tech types.

qeorge• 16 years ago

1) The parent's link indicated that this is real usage data, from Campaign Monitor. CM and similar use tracking pixels, and can detect what client is being used to open the email.

2) I use Outlook all the time, as do many people I work with. Gmail is great for webmail, but its not a replacement for Outlook, especially if you rely heavily on contacts, calendar, tasks, or search.

ruff• 16 years ago

Don't know if it still does it but ClearContext use to provide this exact solution for Outlook. It prioritized your Inbox based people and e-mails that you haven't responded to yet.

http://www.clearcontext.com/user_guide/contacts.html

The product seems to have chased off into GTD-land, but the sort of the Inbox was really useful.

devahaz• 16 years ago

Hi, I'm the CEO of ClearContext. We have focused the last couple of years on including this type of functionality as part of our project management product, but we plan to release a simple free product for Outlook users focused just on identifying your most important messages. We'll start beta-testing that product this month.

vecter2• 16 years ago

Xobni doesn't claim to solve the mailbox triage problem. That's a really hard problem.

gduffy• 16 years ago

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=xobni+...

loup-vaillant• 16 years ago

Awesome. Now can we do it on a local MUA (Thunderbird, Mutt…), or on an MDA (procmail…)?

I like to own the computers that analyse my personal data. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1648400

alec• 16 years ago

From the video, it looks like they have a Bayesian-style mail filter, but instead of applying it to find spam, they apply it to find important mail. This is not too hard to set up; the tricky bit they've automated is analyzing which emails are read and replied to, as opposed to just which ones are marked, so it's more automatic.

kristiandupont• 16 years ago

I run GTD-like system and I am not immediately attracted to this. To me, an email either "requires action" or is "done". Obviously, a lot of stuff goes directly into done (receipts etc.), but I would not trust automation with that I think..

jarin• 16 years ago

This is pretty awesome, I just hope it plays nicely with OtherInbox.

atlei• 16 years ago

I use simple Outlook rules to automatically highlight emails from important people and friends...

However, this sounds like a "reverse bayesian spam filter" that instead of filtering out spam is filtering out "most important email" and learning over time ?

It shouldn't be too hard adjusting SpamBayes or similar filters to do this, should it ? Anyone know about any solution for Outlook ?

mike-cardwell9• 16 years ago

Um. I use sieve to classify mail and filter into different folders. Sieve is about ten years old.

If Google announced that they were supporting the managesieve protocol and/or allowing people to edit sieve filters for their account through a web interface, then I'd be impressed.

teoruiz• 16 years ago

I wonder how this feature will translate to in the Android Gmail client.

jakevoytko• 16 years ago

I hope that this improves their false-positive rate for identifying spam. If a message is borderline, I wouldn't mind it receiving a "low priority" tag instead of being auto-junked. My personal messages are usually classified correctly, but I need explicit filters to save Git and Boost mailing list messages from the spam folder. As a result, actual spam messages that were correctly labelled "spam" are archived instead of deleted, and I still waste time deleting scams and shams.

TheSOB884• 16 years ago

Don't know if this is the best place to bring it up, but I don't think "bacn" is a good word for low-priority email. There are a lot of passionate email users who are even more passionate about bacon.

There could even be a backlash.

wilschroter• 16 years ago

I just use http://www.unsubscribe.com and it fixes my junk mail and mailing list problem once and for all.

pdx• 16 years ago

I need this to be integrated with the filters they already have.

For example, when my dad forwards me every joke that's ever been forwarded to him over the last 24 hours, I don't want them cluttering up my important emails. However, if he actually writes something (rare, but occasionally happens), than that's important. Integrating this with the filters would allow me to use the FWD: and FW: subject line tags to segregate his important vs his non-important emails.

aufreak3• 16 years ago

Looks like it is not yet available to "the rest of the world" - Asia :(

ebun• 16 years ago

I wouldn't mind a similar system put in place for Google Reader next

Email overload? Try Priority Inbox

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