Gmail Priority Inbox – What an idea sir jee

There comes a breath of relief for intense email users, receiving hundreds of emails in single day, with the launch of Gmail Priority Inbox. With Priority Inbox, Google has built up a system which intelligently figures out & categorizes emails into ‘important’ category & puts them at the top for user’s immediate attention.

Please also have a look at this wonderful video created by them which explains the functionality in a very layman's language.

And the best thing about this useful feature is its simplicity. It’s just a one click process to activate it on your account & the user doesn’t need to teach Gmail anything or set up any rules. It automatically start working based on a number of criteria like

§  How frequently one open, read or respond to a message from a given sender

§  How often one read a message with certain keywords

§  Or whether one responds to messages if the mail is not directly marked to you but to a group etc.

So as this system keeps on learning with time based on user’s behavior towards his/her emails it keeps on getting better with time.

Along with the automated system Google also takes inputs from the user where he/she can manually upgrade a message to ‘important’ category or downgrade a message to normal & this is recorded in the system for future categorization.

I’m using this service for more than a week now & it is brilliant. Almost 98% of the times the service seems to be working for me. At times I saw some promotional or group mails from some websites/forums getting in the ‘important’ section and I couldn’t know the reason behind it. But that’s ok. Once I manually mark them unimportant they never appear there again.

But what worries me is what if I get used to this system & some person whom I’ve kicked out of ‘important’ category sent me an urgent message which needs my immediate attention. Will Gmail systems will be smart enough to figure that out from its content & overwrite my previous actions thus putting into my priority inbox.

The funny part is that assuming other email service providers introduce similar functionality & it becomes a norm then we might see rise of a new group of MEO Consultants (Mail Engine Optimization) J where they advice corporate on how to write emails with important keywords, subject lines etc. to get place into the priority boxes of its users.

 I think solutions like these should inspire the proud engineers & product managers around the world to solve world’s most challenging problems with easy & intuitive solutions.