Comments for Will Gmail Get a Magic Inbox that Can Analyze Your Social Graph to Organize Mail?

Will Gmail Get a Magic Inbox that Can Analyze Your Social Graph to Organize Mail?

2009-05-21T15:40:33Z

Alex Chitu from the Google Operating System blog found an interesting reference to a "magic inbox" in Gmail's code this morning. In addition, there are also references to an "icebox-inbox" and the ability to sort mail by priority. Google has been relatively tepid with regards to adding features that exploit a user's social graph, but these references seem to point towards a system where Google could organize a user's mail based on the strength of this user's connection with the sender and not just based on the time a message arrived.

]]> For a lot of us, our most meaningful social network is still represented in our email inboxes, and if anybody should be able to use this data and turn it into an interesting application, it would surely be Google.

Gmail Labs already has a feature that allows users to view multiple inboxes at the same time, so this new feature could potentially be built on top of this, with an inbox with high-priority messages at the top and the rest of the messages at the bottom.

Is this a Useful Way to Organize Mail?

Whether this is necessarily a better way to organize mail is a different question. After all, there is also a lot of implicit information in when a message was sent. That said, though, a lot of us have hundreds or even thousands of unread messages (at least those of us that haven't become a slave to the inbox zero philosophy), so it will be interesting to see if this new feature (if indeed it is real) will be able to help us to organize our dysfunctional inboxes.

Note: we searched the Gmail code for the references to the 'Magic Inbox' ourselves and came away empty-handed. Chances are, that Google is only testing this for a small number of users right now.

Comment from Kanwal Khipple on 2009-05-21

2009-05-21T16:26:17Z

I think it should be fairly reasonable for GMail to learn my emailing habits:

- what emails i reply to automatically
- what emails (specific email account or particular doamin) are "tagged" with specific labels

Based off of this, it can start suggesting labels similiar to how they have a Suggest Contacts feature in the GMail labs right now.

Comment from MacStories on 2009-05-21

2009-05-21T16:31:19Z

Interesting, it would be cool if it "learns" to automatically tag my mails.
Gmail is getting better everyday better, and with Mailplane is just amazing.

Comment from Willi on 2009-05-21

2009-05-21T16:33:10Z

Uhh, I have to use the h-word ... we have to attack the trouble with todays info and com management *holistically* - whether or not Google does this step to the magic inbox. This afternoon another debate led me to open a mind map to collect some thoughts about the issue. Blogs, wikis, mail and feeds, bookmarks that's all in a mess today, because of fragmentation. Just go to the mind map at http://www.twick.me , see some nodes and contribute ...

Comment from Carl Barron on 2009-05-21

2009-05-21T20:34:01Z

That’s a good thing to do, yet the main problem I and my friends have with Gmail is that we can’t use it much at all, the reason being there’s no facility to create folders is there or have I missed something?

So it’s pretty useless, as having everything on one page would take you near enough forever to locate it in a busy e-mail box.

Signed Carl Barron Chairman of agpcuk

Comment from bruce aldridge on 2009-05-21

2009-05-21T23:30:52Z

maybe you didn't look in the right place for the code,
get web developer tools for firefox, click 'Information' , 'View Javascript' and Ctrl-F it

...

Iz="outbox",Jz="1.0",Kz=": ",Vza="lsmv",Wza="install",Lz='",Qz="

",cAa="

",Rz="",Sz="Reply to all",dAa="Recover from Trash",eAa="Ignore",fAa="Report phishing",gAa="Delete forever",hAa="Refresh",iAa="Send",jAa="Create a new label",kAa="Create a filter",Tz="Settings",lAa="Expand all",mAa="Expand",Uz='">

Comment from bruce aldridge on 2009-05-21

2009-05-21T23:32:41Z

try this



Iz="outbox",Jz="1.0",Kz=": ",Vza="lsmv",Wza="install",Lz='",Qz="",cAa="",Rz="",Sz="Reply to all",dAa="Recover from Trash",eAa="Ignore",fAa="Report phishing",gAa="Delete forever",hAa="Refresh",iAa="Send",jAa="Create a new label",kAa="Create a filter",Tz="Settings",lAa="Expand all",mAa="Expand",Uz='">

Comment from Luke on 2009-05-21

2009-05-22T01:48:40Z

FWIW, Xoopit does exactly that - marries your Facebook social graph with your Gmail inbox to provide extra context. I'm not sure it's quite what you're describing but even just showing the pictures of people in the message is very exciting.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/13/xoopit-marries-facebook-status-updates-with-gmail/

Comment from Dmitri Eroshenko on 2009-05-22

2009-05-22T12:30:52Z

Good catch, Frederic! This is closely related to lead scoring, which is a fairly developed discipline. It has to be, because as the lead volume goes up, the quality goes down and sales teams need to prioritize their efforts.

All it boils down to is scoring the contact database, and this should be a combination of manual and automated scoring to reflect the subtleties of each situation.

Long story short, we plan to release a contact scoring system within Relenta (email-based contact and task manager) so that incoming emails can be handled with different priority, depending on the contact who sent it.

Comment from Somchai on 2009-10-20

2009-10-20T17:47:01Z

Thank you Frederic.
I try to view gmail code with firebug but
It make my gmail hang.

หางาน สมัครงาน งานราชการ

Comment from meguare on 2009-10-30

2009-10-30T17:56:02Z

Some "service providers" keep a track of the number of times their service (or one of their services) has been either been displayed on your web site or has referred visitors to your "target" web site. These services are then able to give a comparative ranking for a site against other sites based on their own usage. Results can therefore be used as a general guide or indication but should not be treated as 100% reliable.