Sunday, September 5, 2010
Gmail introduced Priority Inbox (Beta) Feature.
 |
| The newly featured ‘Priority Inbox’ splits itself into three layers - ‘Important and unread’, ‘Starred’ and ‘Everything else’. |
People tell us all the time that they’re getting more and more mail and
often feel overwhelmed by it all. We know what you mean—here at Google
we run on email. Our inboxes are slammed with hundreds, sometimes
thousands of messages a day—mail from colleagues, from lists, about
appointments and automated mail that’s often not important. It’s
time-consuming to figure out what needs to be read and what needs a
reply. Today, we’re happy to introduce Priority Inbox (in beta)—an experimental new way of taking on information overload in Gmail.
Gmail
has always been pretty good at filtering junk mail into the “spam”
folder. But today, in addition to spam, people get a lot of mail that
isn't outright junk but isn't very important—bologna, or “bacn.”
So we've evolved Gmail's filter to address this problem and extended
it to not only classify outright spam, but also to help users separate
this "bologna" from the important stuff. In a way, Priority Inbox is
like your personal assistant, helping you focus on the messages that
matter without requiring you to set up complex rules.
 | |||||||
| Priority Inbox splits your inbox into three sections: “Important and unread,” “Starred” and “Everything else." |
As messages come in, Gmail automatically flags some of them as
important. Gmail uses a variety of signals to predict which messages are
important, including the people you email most (if you email Bob a lot,
a message from Bob is probably important) and which messages you open
and reply to (these are likely more important than the ones you skip
over). And as you use Gmail, it will get better at categorizing messages
for you. You can help it get better by clicking the 
or 
buttons at the top of the inbox to correctly mark a conversation as
important or not important. (You can even set up filters to always mark
certain things important or unimportant, or rearrange and customize the
three inbox sections.)
After lots of internal testing here at Google, as well as with Gmail and Google Apps users at home and at work, we’re ready for more people to try it out. Priority Inbox will be rolling out to all Gmail users, including those of you who use Google Apps, over the next week or so. Once you see the "New! Priority Inbox" link in the top right corner of your Gmail account (or the new Priority Inbox tab in Gmail Settings), take a look.
or
buttons at the top of the inbox to correctly mark a conversation as
important or not important. (You can even set up filters to always mark
certain things important or unimportant, or rearrange and customize the
three inbox sections.)After lots of internal testing here at Google, as well as with Gmail and Google Apps users at home and at work, we’re ready for more people to try it out. Priority Inbox will be rolling out to all Gmail users, including those of you who use Google Apps, over the next week or so. Once you see the "New! Priority Inbox" link in the top right corner of your Gmail account (or the new Priority Inbox tab in Gmail Settings), take a look.
