- posted on
- January 7, 2008
- by Liz Danzico
If It Can’t Say Anything Nice, Gmail Says It Anyway
Nevermind what you thought about your friends — Gmail might know better.
I think I know where my relationships stand — whether they’re with close, everyday friends, online friends, work friends, childhood friends — I can sum them up in a few sentences. (In fact, I have complex taxonomies for thinking about them, but that’s for another post.) And even though these relationships seem fairly uncomplicated, there are nuances that aren’t discussed out loud; details that go unsaid. And sometimes, important details get missed entirely as I speed through my day.
But it appears that Gmail might be able to help avoid, or at least inform, these overlooked details. Gmail can be used to prescribe the nature of relationships.
Recently, I searched Gmail for a friend’s name, and an AdSense ad on the sidebar suggested not only, “Send Your forgiveness,” but also “Say Sorry,” and, most eloquently, “How Saying Sorry.” Despite the clumsy way Google was trying to tell me something, its message got through. At that moment, it occurred to me that, yes indeed, my recent friendship with this person had been all about apologies. Because I had been frequently late, unavailable, and even standing the person up, our email exchanges were full of “sorries.” While I assumed everything was fine, Gmail was telling me that the opposite might be true.
I tried another name. And another. Again and again, Gmail told me things about friendships that I was missing, exposing themes and details that would otherwise have gone unnoticed.
AdSense will never replace paying attention to friends — nor should it ever be used to diagnose a human issue. It’s completely unfeasible to think that emotional, organic, human relationships can be supplanted by an algorithm at any level. But once in a while, it’s interesting to see what themes might be emerging, which words and phrases are most prevalent, in an ongoing dialog with a friend. Sometimes Gmail might just save you the difference between a good relationship and an uncomfortable situation.
thanks for sharing this observation of yours liz.
we often look (and thus blindly focused) to technology to solve a particular problem and suddenly, coming from a different angle, we realize that particular technology can help in another aspect of life.
take the internet for example:)
Fascinating! I wish I used Gmail so I could check this out.
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Thanks, Liz, for sharing. It never would have occurred to me to look too closely into those ads. It speaks volumes both about Google’s technologies and how our relationships are both more and less complicated than we think.
Very much enjoyed your panels at SXSW, too!
Cheers.
Wow!! Interesting find.
:)
Thats genius! I never thought about using G-mail that way. I do like how with G-mail it has the definition of spam in my spam folder.
How very interesting! I am fascinated by the patterns found in every day interactions - be they verbal, written or otherwise - and how those things can be analyzed to form opinions or conclusions about the participants in that interaction (sociology??).
I would love to be able to adapt the algorithms that Google uses on my work email (WAY more can be said on that topic) to filter themes and topics out of everyday correspondences that may help me improve the output of both my daily tasks and the higher level strategic thinking I do for my clients. This is just one of the many things that can be done to improve the overall value of email.
Great observation!
On a similar note, google chat also uses an algorithm to choose which of your contacts to display in your compacted list. I have had similar observations about which 15 contacts show up out of hundreds of others who fade away. It’s as if google knows who you are closest with and who you really want to chat with.