Idea For Email Providers to Reduce Clutter - Create Expiration Dates for Emails.
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Staten Island, NY Posted: 10/8/2014 1:00:00 AM
My Gmail Inbox has over 5,000 emails in it.... plus countless archived junk
Let's face it, some of us get too many emails.
If you are the typical Gmail user, you've been conditioned to archive your email, instead of deleting it. After all, they give you virtually unlimited space and the awesome power of Google's Search to find any email you may be looking for.
The trouble is, after nearly a decade of Gmail, our mailboxes are full of so much clutter that every search is like finding a needle in a haystack.
My Solution... Expiration Dates for Emails
Think about it, you open an email in October, and by December... it's gone, without lifting a finger. How cool would that be?
Since the protocol for email is not easily changed, I think an easy solution is for Email Providers like Google to give us a setting in our account that lets us decide a default setting for how long our email should last before it's deleted. Naturally, we should be able to override it for any given sender or specific message, but otherwise it should vanish on schedule.
Consider this scenario... you configure your inbox to delete everything in 60 days. Then, as an important email comes in from friends, family or co-workers, you can decide to flag either the sender or that particular email for a longer period... or mark them as "Never Expires".
This would be perfect for newsletters, limited time sales promotions, Facebook notifications, etc.
In fact, even with the ability to override the settings, I'd say the majority of all emails are somewhat time sensitive, and certainly useless a year or so after they were sent. Why should we still have an email about a sale from Amazon from 2004?
Joe Crescenzi, Founder
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