Google Buzz and OtherInbox

February 15 2010, 9:00am

Along with much of the internet community, we were highly anticipating Google's new social sharing tool, Google Buzz. Because Buzz is highly integrated into Gmail, we began to think about how OtherInbox should work with Buzz updates. 

Currently, pointing OtherInbox at your Gmail account means automatically labeling and archiving all of your messages that aren't from real people (newsletters, coupons, receipts, confirmations, and alerts). This includes notifications from various social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

When we started using Buzz, we noticed there are a few actions that result in a lot more email. For example if anyone replies or likes one of your updates, you get a notification in your Inbox. In addition, if you reply or like someone else's update, future replies also result in another email. More Buzz activity leads to even more notification emails!

Pretty soon, our Gmail Inbox became overwhelmed with Buzz notifications. As one of our developers said, it is going to be difficult to maintain "Buzz Zero" as it grows.

The question is "How would you like OtherInbox to handle these new notifications?" We could easily add the labeling and archiving of Buzz notifications that reach your Inbox, just like all the other messages we organize. This way, you could get a Digest that lists all of your Buzz notifications from the previous day. But is that what you want? Now is your chance to tell us what would work for you. Please leave your comments and ideas below so we can better shape OtherInbox for Gmail.