Between Gmail, Twitter And Now Facebook, There Is No Universal Inbox, Yet. | Hacker News Reader

Between Gmail, Twitter And Now Facebook, There Is No Universal Inbox, Yet.

techcrunch.com

16 pointsatularora17 comments

A tabbed browser handles this pretty well. I would certainly not want a co-mingled stream of friends updates mixed with personal and business emails in one super aggregator. Seems like they are huntinging for a solution to a non-problem.

I would love to see the end of text messages which cost $15/month ($180/year!) on AT&T - I try to email as much as possible, but its so convenient for everyone else.

It is a real problem you have if you are a TechCrunch columnist and:

- Your work consists of tracking hints and leads sent to you via Facebook, Twitter etc.

- You sign up for everything to try it out, leading to loads of mail.

- You hand out business cards like confetti at events, leading to even more mail.

On the other hand if you work as an office drone at Yet Another Firm, where the use of non-work email is frowned upon (let alone Facebook) then you probably have a different set of problems.

I'd say that for a large chunk of the user base the issue is more like "which messages are worth delivering to my cell phone, so I know I should sneak off to the bathroom and read them now rather than waiting until my lunch break".

Am I the only one finding no personal need for a universal inbox?

I like the fact that having to login to facebook to read a message makes it harder to waste your time there. I like that there is no single point of failure for my e-communication. With each month going by, I worry more about keeping my personal data from aggregating on a single company's servers.

This is a feature I truly do not desire. Seriously. I like (or rather love) the division between the Social web (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and the email. The previous technology to try to cross this (Buzz) wasn't very welcome. I know its widely different what is being proposed, but I truly I'm not interesting in any form of intercommunication between the three, and I truthfully cannot see who would.

As soon as I get Facebook email, I can unify it all in Thunderbird!

Have we gone full circle? Right now I'd really like a desktop application that uses each service's API to integrate everything into one interface (IMAP for Gmail etc). I would still use the web interfaces when not on my main computer, but as a hacker I'm on my main computer a lot and don't mind having things set up for extra convenience.

I also feel that web GUIs are still hacky and limited by what Javascript can do in a window. Desktop applications have no such limitations in UX, and so works better for integration-type work.

Ubuntu seems to be doing this well, or at least heading in this direction, and this is great for me.

What I want is Google Reader for my gmail, twitter, and facebook. But with the extra feature of de-duplication, so when my friend tweets and updates facebook at the same time I only see it once. Is anyone doing this?

my6sense (www.my6sense.com) aggregates Twitter, Facebook and RSS in one place and dedupes by source, meaning you shouldn't see the same update from one person. An added benefit is prioritization of content you are most interested in, so it reduces the noise in a big way. (I'm VP of Marketing there)

We're doing something similar with http://summify.com

Sorry to go off topic, but I couldn't help notice your 'Stories we have aggregated' seems to increase consistently each second, versus sporadically... Is this just a fake counter?

It's interpolated based on the previous days, similar to how Gmail counts storage size. It's not "fake" because it's pretty close to the real number, but it's not perfectly accurate either.

Websites should simply send a copy of any message via email to me. When it happens or bundled at the end of the day. Most of it is crap I don't want to respond to anyway.

And while they are at it: Let me also answer via email.

The situation we have now with having to log in to answer messages within Facebook for example is simply backwards. This is one of the main reasons I hope Facebook will eventually be like Friendster and Myspace - a thing of the past. Not that I am using it now, I just hope I won't be eventually forced to.

>> Between Gmail, Twitter, Yammer, Skype and Facebook it seems that hundreds of people known and unknown are trying to contact you at any given time.

Does anyone actually use Yammer?

This is not a problem. If you're careful with your e-mail address, you don't get any junk-mail. (The simple solution is to have one e-mail address for online sign-ups and one e-mail address for personal communication.) As for the other problems, if you don't want to be overwhelmed by Facebook/Twitter/Socialwhatever, then don't go to them at work. I agree with notauser who said this is probably only a problem if you're a TechCrunch columnist...

Universal inbox is not going to come from competing self-interested businesses. Their role is to innovate and give us options. The role of the open source community and the general public is to choose and consolidate, eventually. In the mean time, we have to live with the complexity that comes with choice and try not to let any one party get too much control.

? Lies

Facebook emails me every comment and notification

SMS backup on my Android phone emails me every Tweet (and SMS)

AOLers, aren't they cute.

Not only does FB email me every message. It sends push notification to my iTouch, my Android and notified via AJAX, on all open Facebook windows.

You can't miss it, even if you want. Last thing I want is a super aggregator!

AOLers are cute, indeed.

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