For many people, staying on top of email has become something of an ordeal.
It remains essential, of course, both for personal and work-related communications, but increasingly, our inboxes are overrun by retail messages, promotional items, newsletters and social media updates.
This problem is even worse and more complicated on mobile devices, with their tiny pop-up keyboards and limited screen space.
A number of startups have been working on this problem, one of which came up with the iOS app Mailbox, which at present works only with Gmail accounts.
But now Google is attempting to take on the email clutter problem directly, introducing this week a way for users to toggle between different categories of messages:
- Primary – the default tab for your primary messages from friends and family
- Promotions – daily deals, Groupon offers, etc.
- Social – Facebook and Twitter updates, etc.
- Updates – bills, receipts, bank statements, etc.
- Forums – incoming messages from mailing lists and email subscriptions
Eliza Kern on GigaOM gave it a positive review. “Once I enabled the new look, the tabs correctly sorted my emails without any effort from me at all. And no effort is generally something people like. So this could be a nice solution for people who don’t want to deal with new email apps like Mailbox."