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March 24, 2010

More Relevant Communication

Yaakov Sabal writes:

Today, we have a binary definition of spam. [A message is either spam or not spam.] But it is not this way. Beside the die hard spam, there is a huge amount of irrelevant email I get on a daily basis, which is nice but not needed - not now, not in this context.

For some reason, Gmail didn't invest into relevancy of messages based on contacts. I have work contacts, I have close team contacts, I have friends, family, enemies etc. My contacts are just a reflection of my life, the society I am in contact with and I am not willing to communicate with the whole society at once. (...)

Buzz is the same: if I buzz about the last concert in town, why should people that I know and follow me - BUT don't live in the same town - should care about it? If I buzz about science, why people that don't like science should care about it? (...)

People should not need to have a black belt in Inbox Zero to [communicate efficiently] - instead Google should provide a cool way to deal with irrelevant bulk things from people.

Yaakov suggests that Google should rank email messages, Buzz messages based on their relevance. Messages from contacts you frequently communicate with are more important than newsletters, Buzz messages related to your interests are more relevant than random blurbs.

Last month, Google acquired Aardvark, a service that connects questions with people that are likely to answer them. A similar technology could rank the messages from your inbox, Buzz messages or Google Reader items.

15 comments:

  1. Well they actually do this already, at least partially. When someone has a bunch of shared items that Buzz deems spam, they are "minimized" and you have to click on the set to see them.

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  2. I higher priority would be getting full blown search in Gmail. Currently, a search in Gmail for "parties" does not return results for an email containing "party", nor will a search for myfriend return results for myfriend@domain.com. Why wasn't this done years ago? I really don't care about bells and whistles when Gmail search doesn't (effectively) work.

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  3. I don't want my email trying to think for me. Facebook tries prioritizing items in their newsfeed, but I think they almost always get it wrong. People are too different, have too many different priorities, and those priorities are almost always shifting. Many people, such as myself, have no trouble triaging email that is presented in strictly chronological order. I'm afraid any automatic prioritization schemes may result in me not seeing something critical.

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  4. IceArdor: +1
    And on the article topic, something inspired by https://mozillalabs.com/raindrop/ would be excellent. Perhaps as an option in Gmail Labs, for starters?

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  5. you mean like http://www.officelabs.com/projects/emailprioritizer/Pages/Default.aspx or Mozilla Raindrop?

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  6. This site is a very relevant site. When someone has a bunch of shared items that Buzz deems spam, they are "minimized" and you have to click on the set to see them. Thanks for the site.

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  7. Google operating system is very much wonderful site to know about the relavant communication site. thanks for the site.

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  8. This site is most popular in this time. People should not need to have a black belt in Inbox Zero to communicate efficiently - instead Google should provide a cool way to deal with irrelevant bulk things from people.Thanks for the share with me.

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  9. This site is most relevant to the computer communication. My contacts are just a reflection of my life, the society I am in contact with and I am not willing to communicate with the whole society at once. Thanks for the site.

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  10. I strongly disagree with the notion that email from people I frequently communicate with is more relevant than email from people I rarely contact. If I receive an email from someone who I know from school many years ago and I haven't heard from him for a long time and possible don't even know his email address, and he suddenly sends me an email, that is highly relevant.

    This is similar to TF/IDF in IR: terms that occur in many documents are downweighted compared to terms that occur in few documents.

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  11. Hmm it was nice to learn the new definition of spam. I have visited your site long time before and then lost your URL. Accidentally found it again and I am really glad that I did because there is always something new to learn from here. And be updated with Google as I am follower of Google.

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  12. aadvark sucks, i posted a question and all i got were smart arse answers from haters.

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  13. I agree. Aadvark is subpar. There are much better options.

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