
Email overload? Try Priority Inbox - niyazpk
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/email-overload-try-priority-inbox.html
======
patio11
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
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.

------
spicyj
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
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.

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

------
ALee
#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."

~~~
davidedicillo
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.

~~~
bostonvaulter2
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.

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

------
fookyong
That promotional video is exceptionally well-executed.

~~~
walkon
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.

~~~
barrkel
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.

~~~
mdaniel
This may not help your particular situation, but I'd urge you to try VLC
(<http://videolan.org/>) since it has awesome support for playing YouTube
videos. It requires that you paste the YouTube URL into its "Open Network
Stream" dialog, but is otherwise painless.

Almost anything has to be better than using Media Player Classic.

~~~
barrkel
VLC's user interface sucks, which is why I use MPC. Anything to avoid WMP.

In particular, adjusting zoom, aspect ratio, clipping area etc. with MPC, with
the numeric keypad, is completely trivial, but a major pain in the neck with
VLC. (E.g. how do you zoom to 102%? To 94%? How do you crop the top 8 pixels,
because there's fuzz from overscan there?)

And keyboard shortcuts! Alt-Enter is nice and simple to use with MPC. With
VLC, F11 goes full screen but still leaves control gunk visible; Ctrl+H
removes the gunk, but - believe it or not - also disables F11! In full screen
(F11) and controls hidden with Ctrl+H, it's surprisingly awkward to get back
out again. Yes, you can use the "other" full screen by double-clicking with
the mouse, but at that point it's clear that it's already lost.

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

~~~
davidw
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.

~~~
roryokane
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.

~~~
j_s
You can switch to Yahoo Asia to forward e-mail for free.

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

~~~
moultano
Without knowing anything detailed about how all this is implemented, it looks
to be derived from nothing more than is stored in your inbox:

The text of the emails, and whether they are read and replied to.

As such it seems like strictly less information than you are requesting that
they store.

~~~
avar
In the presentation they say that it's partially based on what E-Mails you
read. So they're tracking more than just the information in your inbox,
they're also considering how you _use_ your inbox through the GMail web
interface.

~~~
robryan
I'd be surprised if this kind of data wasn't already tracked.

~~~
avar
Oh yes, Google has explicitly stated that they track stuff like this. I was
just replying to the "it looks to be derived from nothing more than is stored
in your inbox" comment by moultano. Which is obviously incorrect, and Google
even states so in their introduction video.

It'd be interesting to what degree using GMail over IMAP v.s. over the GMail
web interface affects the heuristics of this new feature.

------
jakevoytko
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.

------
kwamenum86
Ironic considering Eric Schmidt disputed the existence of communication
overload fairly recently.

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/12/eric-schmidt-mobile-is-
the-...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/12/eric-schmidt-mobile-is-the-future-
and-theres-no-such-thing-as-communication-overload/)

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

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

------
jgilliam
This is gonna send shockwaves through the email marketing industry.

~~~
acangiano
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.

~~~
studer
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).

~~~
acangiano
Perhaps 'annoy' was too strong of a term. What I meant was the kind of emails
that barely interest your users enough not to mark them as spam. Low quality
bacn.

What I'm saying is that it's not the death of newsletters. This new feature is
really useful and its negative impact on permission based marketing can be
reduced by ensuring that the content you send out is really appealing to your
users. Which is a win-win situation, because more appealing content usually
leads to more conversions.

A high open rate may mean that your newsletter ends up in the high priority
inbox for a decent percentage of your user-base, despite being a newsletter
(unless Google automatically excludes newsletters).

------
kristiandupont
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..

------
johndbritton
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...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/johndbritton/3257013239/sizes/o/)

~~~
Twisol
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.

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

~~~
mcherm
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!

~~~
jgrahamc
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.

------
aresant
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://www.officelabs.com/projects/emailprioritizer/Pages/Default.aspx)

[http://visibleranking.com/2010/05/most-popular-email-
clients...](http://visibleranking.com/2010/05/most-popular-email-clients.php)

~~~
jlouis
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.

~~~
qeorge
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.

~~~
weavejester
_Gmail is great for webmail, but its not a replacement for Outlook, especially
if you rely heavily on contacts, calendar, tasks, or search._

Really? I find Google Apps to be better in all four of those categories,
especially search. What makes Outlook superior in those categories?

~~~
ricardo
Outlook's market share isn't directly correlated to its capabilities. Many
large organizations force their employees to use Outlook as their corporate
standard.

------
pdx
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.

------
petercooper
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
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.

------
marcamillion
Anyone know who made that video?

~~~
TheSOB88
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
I'm guessing it's internal, but made one of their marketing teams.
([http://www.notesondesign.net/inspiration/advertising/google-...](http://www.notesondesign.net/inspiration/advertising/google-
gets-creative/))

------
tremendo
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
What browser are you using?

~~~
tremendo
Google Chrome 5.0.375.125 beta on Ubuntu Lucid

------
loup-vaillant
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
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.

------
atlei
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 ?

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

------
chrismiller
Hopefully this will be available for Google Apps hosted email.

~~~
studer
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."

~~~
chrismiller
Don't know how I missed that. Thanks.

------
houseabsolute
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.

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

------
aufreak3
Looks like it is not yet available to "the rest of the world" - Asia :(

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

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

------
TheSOB88
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.

------
michaelhalligan
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.

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

------
mike-cardwell
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.

