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Ask HN: Can our email inboxes be social?

2 points by Cherian_Abraham ↗ HN
Maybe the current tools allow for this, but I am unaware if they do. If not, I hope this can seed a discussion.

Our email inboxes (Gmail for example) are sorted by when the email was received. Imagine if our inboxes were sorted (or if emails were highlighted) by more than just the time it was received? For someone who may be going through 200 to 300 emails per day, it might do them a whole lot of good to show at the very top, the ones that requires their attention, such as emails from their personal and professional contacts, emails that originated within their organization etc.. rather than resorting to a plain sort-by-timestamp view.

That way, we could instead of digging through the mountain of emails we get everyday and trying to sort through the ones we need to read or ignore, our inbox actually steps in to figure out what should be on the top of the list. I am sure Gmail (or another client) already knows who I most email back and forth, or which ones I read quicker than the others.

Wouldnt it be possible to build an intuitive feature that will cut right through the clutter and take me to the ones that require my attention rightaway?

Once again, I am not sure if such a feature exists of which I am unaware. But if not, why is this not available today?

2 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 17.3 ms ] thread
wewyor
Perhaps you should take a look at gmail filters, labels, priority inbox, multiple inboxes, and I'm sure there are more.
Cherian_Abraham
I am sorry if I was not clear. I was not asking if the user could create the filters themselves or add labels. Why arent they done for me already? I agree that Priority Inbox is a step in the right direction, but it still requires me to teach the system before it can start predicting.

I am asking, isnt there a lot of identifiable data already present that it can use to do a better job at showing what I should see first?