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Ask HN: How to manage multiple email addresses with Google+

12 points by techiferous ↗ HN
Pardon me if this is a dumb question. But I have friendsandfamily@gmail.com, onlinehackerpersona@gmail.com, and contractor@myfreelancecompany.com. I obviously have intentionally structured my email addresses by the circles I want to communicate with.

So Google+ has come out with Circles, which solves this problem in a different way: manage your circles with just one email address (identity). But I've got multiple gmail addresses. What do I do now? What are other people doing? Am I misunderstanding something?

12 comments

[ 17.1 ms ] story [ 1270 ms ] thread
spooneybarger
I'm in the same boat. My solution has been to only use G+ for one of those purposes.
cmelbye
Out of curiosity, why did you structure your emails like that?

Personally, I used to have multiple addresses for different purposes but realized I didn't have a reason for doing it. I created a new address using myfirstname.mylastname@gmail.com and I use that for everything now (including Google+).

techiferous
> Out of curiosity, why did you structure your emails like that?

About ten years ago I had a junk email I used for web sites, separate from the one I used for friends and family. So as an anti-spam measure.

A couple of years ago when I started my online programmer persona, I used persona@gmail.com for continuity.

The system has actually worked pretty well for me, apart from having to manage lots of accounts in my mail client.

> but realized I didn't have a reason for doing it.

That step didn't happen to me until now. Now what?

gregpilling
>Now what?

Select your favorite email address, and forward the others to it. If your favorite is your gmail, then have the incoming emails automatically tagged with a label appropriate for where it is coming from (you may wish to use "family", "hacking" "work" etc).

techiferous
This is an option I'll definitely consider.

Is Google+ designed to actually work seamlessly this way? In other words, will people interacting with my Google+ presence through my friendsandfamily@gmail.com have the same experience as those interacting with my Google+ presence through my onlinehackerpersona@gmail.com?

Also, I've got two invites: one for onlinehackerpersona@gmail.com and one for friendsandfamily@gmail.com. Which one do I take? If I choose one, do I lose the connection with the other person and have to re-invite them?

wh-uws
Can't speak for that person but I do it because I like to keep the different parts of my life compartmentalized.

When I'm thinking about I clients I don't want to see personal stuff and vice versus.

gnubardt
You can enable multiple sign in in your account settings page. It lets you switch between accounts very quickly and doesn't require re-authenticating each time.

https://www.google.com/accounts/b/0/MultipleSessions

techiferous
This means I would manage several different Google+ accounts, right? I would have to set up my circles on each one. At first that sounds redundant to the purpose of Google+, but maybe that's okay? Maybe the Circles are really the subcircles of my individual accounts?
damoncali
I don't know, but this is a big problem for me as well. I have several gmail based email, analytics, adwords, adsense, etc. accounts and use them all. I keep Chrome Safari and Firefox running so I can be logged into a different account on each browser at the same time, but I'm running out of browsers.
danoprey
You may already know this, but you can double your amount of sign ins by opening an incognito window in each browser.
unicornporn
or you can just use multifox for firefox.