
Gmail: Priority Inbox Is Working; Users Spending 15 Percent Less Time Reading - michaelnovati
http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/06/gmail-priority-inbox-stats/
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mixmax
_"Priority Inbox users spend 15 percent less time reading email than Gmail
users who don’t have it turned on."_

This could of course be because priority inbox works. It could also be because
users that have priority inbox turned on are correlated with users that spend
less time reading emails. Or it could be that they never see non-important
mails. Or it could be something else entirely.

It's hard to draw bulletproof conclusions form statistics, but easy to use
them in marketing.

~~~
ashleyw
15% sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

You've got to remember, while you may manage your inbox well (through being
wary of who you give your email to and utilising email filters), not everyone
does. A lot of people simply give their email to anyone who asks for it,
whether it's a family member or a company offering them a 25p-off coupon. Now
imagine if that type of person turned on Priority Inbox, and all their
personal emails from family and friends instantly popped up to the top,
they're quickly going to stop scanning the bottom "Everything else" section as
well as they used to, aren't they. I know I did, I only check those email once
or twice a day now.

~~~
lsd5you
The issue is not whether the claim is plausible or not, but that in fact it is
virtually impossible to verify. We know that statistics like this are not true
on aggregate, otherwise we would be many times happier, more productive and
more intelligent than a generation ago.

~~~
edanm
"otherwise we would be many times happier, more productive and more
intelligent than a generation ago."

Aren't we? I'd argue we're at the very least more productive.

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brianwillis
My company makes software for car dealers. Our customers strongly believe that
the advice and guidance they provide when someone is buying a car is
irreplaceable. They can't envision a future without salespeople.

Priority Inbox is just another example of how machines are getting to
understand us better than we understand ourselves. Amazon knows what books I
want to read before I've even heard of the author, Google knows that I
incorrectly spelled my search query and so returns results for the correct
spelling, and Xero figures out how much I've spent on coffee this month
without a lot of manual entry. Advice is becoming a commodity.

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charlesju
How are you guys checking your email? I don't have a single unread message in
any of my inboxes. That's my system. Under that system, it's hard for me to
find use for priority inbox.

~~~
patio11
Priority Inbox is great for me because it segregates "nice to know but not
critical" (sold another copy of BCC, comment on blog, CC charged successfully
by one of my dozen service providers) from "attention required" (customer
inquiry, metrics hit a yellow alert, Slicehost couldn't charge card and I've
got 48 hours to call bank before my business dies). Red alerts, obviously,
don't even bother w email.

~~~
charlesju
Why don't you filter those messages out into a label and auto-archive?

~~~
patio11
Because if it doesn't hit my inbox I'll never see it at all. The archive is
great for looking up stuff ("What did I pay for Slicehost last month? Did Mary
Smith get a purchase confirmation?"), but not great for push notifications.
Non-priority emails in the inbox are, for me, a good compromise in terms of
amount of distraction caused per unit of actionable info gained.

~~~
jackowayed
I have a bunch of filters setup to archive but also label them as "Skim". So I
see in my sidebar when there Skim has unread messages, and I get around to
reading them when I have time.

I could just have those filters "Never mark it as important", but those
messages are less important than stuff in the not-important part of my inbox.
It's stuff like high-volume mailing lists that are never urgent. I'll let Skim
go for 2 or 3 days if I'm busy, whereas I like reading all email in my inbox
within a couple hours of seeing it.

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hinting
_Gmail Priority Inbox:_ Complex algorithmic solution that uses your behavior
and ratings to determine which messages are important.

 _Facebook Messages:_ Tell us who your friends are -- those messages are
important.

Love the contrast, and think each speaks volumes about the company behind it.

~~~
Charuru
Both companies are integrating the other's approach to have a more holistic
solution. Facebook prioritizes news messages from your closest friends, by
measuring your interaction with them. And of course Google Me is going to be
something interesting.

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fookyong
doesn't 15% less time in gmail = 15% less ad clicks for google from gmail?

ok it's not a 1:1 correlation, but I'm sure there's some kind of relationship.
there's an intrinsic conflict of interest - the more you make the app
convenient to the point the user doesn't need to interact with it as much, the
more you hurt your ad revenue.

(that said, I'm sure a dip in revenue from gmail isn't going to end google)

~~~
izendejas
You also have to realize that you're training Google's algorithms to better
understand the things that matter to you, so that even though you spend less
time reading emails, now they can target ads better, leading to more clicks
(and higher bids due to better targetting).

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Charuru
This reminds me of the plentyoffish article that said that that site has
purposefully distorted portraits in order to make users spend more time
clicking through to profiles...

I guess that's why one company is plentyoffish and the other one is Google.

~~~
andrewvc
Wow, thanks for brining that up.

PoF is always trotted out on HN as a scaling success and a model way to run a
business. I'd say it's more a story of reaching critical mass and doing a
mediocre, but good enough job to keep people from leaving.

It's on my a short list of sites I find actively irritating to use. Given that
they trade in potential partners, something I and most others find extremely
interesting in and of itself, that's quite a feat.

