Google, gmail update

Google Announces Major Gmail Update That Will Organize Your Inbox, Reduce Clutter.

Google’s latest update is about to hit the general public and is designed to automatically organize your inbox, making sure only the most important emails are front and center.Gmail is currently used by 400 million people worldwide.

In Gmail, there will be five categories that your mail will be sorted into. These are: Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates and Forums.  You will be able to turn off or on individually from the settings menu.  You will also be able to drag and drop emails into categories, showing Gmail exactly where you would like these emails to be categorized.

So how would this look? Notifications from Twitter or Facebook would fall into the Social tab.  Shopping deals such as Groupon would fall under the Promotions tab.  Stuff like Receipts or Billing Notices would show up under updates.  Your emails that come from your contacts would be filtered into the Primary category.  The Forums group will be dedicated to messages from online groups or mailing lists.

Gmail Update Includes Category Tabs To Reduce Clutter

This update will be done gradually over the next few weeks for the desktop, allowing the classic inbox still available for those who do not wish to switch over.  I think this will be a great way to answer my most important emails, without having to pick through different promotional emails.  I like the idea that you can easily customize the new inbox, selecting which tabs you prefer to use.

How do other Gmail users feel about this update?  User icebike, from Androidcentral.com says “Really? Just another layer of confusion if you ask me. “   Another user, named coraphise says, “I’ve had these basic categories in place for a long time, so for me personally, I don’t find this useful.”  S0dhi replied,” I like the idea.  I’m already using the multiple inboxs tab and superstars to manage my work and to-do lists.”  Obviously, it’s receiving mixed reviews.

One group who may have a difficult time with this change are marketers for various companies. In fact, this could be the group’s worst nightmare.  This is because, if Gmail users never click on the Promotions tab, all of those emails will disappear, without requiring users to unsubscribe from mailing lists.  This is going to be a big headache for companies that rely heavily on email marketing.  A few months from now it will be interesting to see if there has been a drop in users opening any emails under the Promotions tab.  Twitter, Facebook and other social sites could notice a difference too.  They also rely on email to get former members to come back to their service. These messages won’t be seen if the user does not click on the Social tab.  However, notifications from Google’s own social network will appear in a red box in the upper right corner of every inbox on Gmail.

The updated app for Android and iPhone has just become available.

Here’s a peek at what those look like:

Gmail update

In Gmail for Android 4.0+ and Gmail for iPhone and iPad apps, you will see the Primary screen as soon as you open the app. It will also be very easy to navigate to the other tabs.

On the Android, the notifications will show up in the stream with their tabs, but on iOS, the message in the inbox just shows “New Categorized e-Mail” with a summary underneath it.

Google is also introducing improved notifications. You can decide if you want to get notified of messages in the primary inbox. These will not include notifications for the entire social cites, updates, promotions, etc. They will be automatically moved to other tabs.

So will this update finally enable you to empty your inbox once and for all? Quite possibly, considering most of your social notifications and promotional emails will not show in your primary tab. You will not have to read them if you chose not to.