Google are on a roll and introducing the Priority Inbox (in beta) -- an experimental new way of taking on information overload in Gmail, identifying important email and separating it out from everything else:

“Gmail has always been pretty good at filtering junk mail into the “spam” folder. But today, in addition to spam, people get a lot of mail that isn’t outright junk but isn’t very important—bologna, or “bacn.” So we’ve evolved Gmail’s filter to address this problem and extended it to not only classify outright spam, but also to help users separate this “bologna” from the important stuff. In a way, Priority Inbox is like your personal assistant, helping you focus on the messages that matter without requiring you to set up complex rules.”

Here it is in action

According to their blog The Priority Inbox splits your inbox into three sections: “Important and unread”, “Starred”, and “Everything else”. Gmail uses a variety of signals to predict which messages are important, including the people you email most (if you email Bob a lot, a message from Bob is probably important) and which messages you open and reply to (these are likely more important than the ones you skip over). And as you use Gmail, it will get better at categorizing messages for you.

Google wave is to be no more, the Google team in Sydney, having put a lot of effort into an innovative new product will see the technology developed in a different way.  What happened?  Wave had some internal competition from Google Buzz, and users were having to get used to two very different ways of communicating.  And in both cases you need someone to communicate with. A very active Sydney Wave user group dived into the technology, visited Google HQ and began to experiment.  Here are some of their discussions on hearing the news but first, from the Google blog:

… Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.

Posted by Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Operations & Google Fellow

I didn’t know you could be a Google Fellow! But that aside, here are comments from the wave user group in Sydney on their experience with using wave and interacting with the Google Wave team. The discussion took place on facebook, but some of the points raised are so pertinent I wanted to post them here. I agree with Tony’s comment:

Tony Cosentino

It’s funny, I was at a gathering the night before the announcement and when wave came up in conversation someone said ‘does anyone even use it?’ Most agreed not.

I made a statement that I believed they had rolled out BUZZ and WAVE the wrong way around. I think WAVE should have been offered to all gmail users from the beginning to allow a critical mass to use and understand it. It was so hard to try putting groups together in the beginning with limited invites it all became like a secret cult with little documentation.

I feel for Gina Trapani who wrote the ‘Complete Google Wave Guide’ as an ongoing project. And also the programmers we have met at google wave meeting putting a lot of time and money to develop wave tools. No One in google lost their jobs over it.

I am also glad I hadn’t put anything really critical on wave that I was relying on as a long term repository.

Frances Jones

What I appreciated about Wave was that Lars, Jens & co created it in Sydney and I will always admire them as entrepreneurs. Heck, Lars even came to see us speak at the User Group. Many of the nscm crowd got together at Google HQ because of it. It created positives for us.

Google spent I don’t know how many $millions on Wave which Sydney benefitted from. Positives all round for us I’d say.

Tony Hollingsworth

Spot on Frances – the community building and support that occurred remains.

For example, some memories include:
http://gwsug.eventbrite.com/ – the informal user groups where you can see the range of people interested.

http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%23gwsug – we coined the hastag #gwsug for Google Wave Sydney User Group and can enjoy the history via FriendFeed, including the photos of the community.

Finally your teriffic blog posts Frances capturing the initial excitement and promise of Wave:

First impressions of Google Wave, An Australian Perspective
Innovation according to Goovle Wave co-creator Lars Rasmussen

These guys (and many others) really were experienced on wave and their comments, to me at least, say a lot.

Who’s in what generation, what are their peculiar charactistics, is there a difference and why. After hunting for the same information over and over in different guises, I’m putting it here with other stats.  These are from the Pew Research Centre, with some interesting notes on where the names came from. Currently (in 2010):

Millennials are aged 18 to 29
Gen Xers  30 to 45
Baby Boomers  46 to 64 and
Silents  65 and older

Naming the Generations

Generational names are the handiwork of popular culture. Some are drawn from a historic event; others from rapid social or demographic change, others from a big turn in the calender [1].

The Millennial generation are named after the turn in the calender and refers to those born after 1980 – the first generation to come of age in the new Millennium.

Generation X covers people born from 1956 through 1980. The label long ago overtook the first name affixed to this generation: the Baby Bust. Xers are often depicted as savvy, entrepreneurial loners.

The Baby Boomer label is drawn from the great spike in fertility that began in 1946, right after the end of World War II, and ended almost as abruptly in 1964, around the time the birth control pill went on the market.  It’s a classic example of a demography-driven name.

The Silent generation describes adults born from 1928 through 1945. Children of the Great Depression and world War II, their ‘Silent’ label refers to their conformist and civic instincts.  It also makes for a nice contrast with the noisy ways of the anti-establishment Boomers.

The Greatest generation (those born before 1928) ’saved the world’ when it was young – it’s the generation that fought and won World War II. [1]

There are many other interesting statistics in the report, another one that is useful is the uptake of social networking sites.

Notes:

These statistics relate to the American population and we cannot assume that these accurately reflect trends in other countries.

References

[1] http://pewsocialtrends.org/pubs/751/millennials-confident-connected-open-to-change
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Y

Privacy, it seems, really isn’t an issue.  A new survey has come out with some surprising results.  While GenX is concerned about privacy on-line, this recent survey suggests this is not the case for the next generation.

the ‘digital natives’ who are known for enthusiastically embracing social networking – will retain their willingness to share personal information online even as they get older and take on more responsibilities…..

the advantages Millennials see in personal disclosure will outweigh their concerns about their privacy.[1,2]

In this case the term digital native or millennial describes those aged 18-28 years old. Here are some revealing quotes from the survey:

Most of those surveyed noted that the disclosure of personal information online carries many social benefits as people open up to others in order to build friendships, form and find communities, seek help, and build their reputations. They said Millennials have already seen the benefits and will not reduce their use of these social tools over the next decade as they take on more responsibilities while growing older.

The majority argued in answers to the survey that new social norms that reward disclosure are already in place among the young The experts also expressed hope that society will be more forgiving of those whose youthful mistakes are on display in social media such as Facebook picture albums or YouTube videos.

Some said new definitions of “private” and “public” information are taking shape in networked society. They argued that this means that Millennials might change the kinds of personal information they share as they age, but the aging process will not fundamentally change the incentives to share.

At the same time, some experts said an awkward trial-and-error period is unfolding and will continue over the next decade, as people adjust to new realities about how social networks perform and as new boundaries are set about the personal information that is appropriate to share.

Differences between generations are interesting, how about this one – do you sleep with your cell phone next to your bed?[2]

I do.  It’s got my alarm on it.

References and Notes

[1] http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Future-of-Millennials.aspx
[2] http://pewsocialtrends.org/pubs/751/millennials-confident-connected-open-to-change

The ‘pinch of salt stuff’:

First off – this is an American Survey, which means it’s only applicable in America and we can only guess if this would be the case in other countries.

And as PEW say, the survey results are based on a non-random online sample of 895 internet experts and other internet users, recruited via email invitation, Twitter or Facebook from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University. Since the data are based on a non-random sample, a margin of error cannot be computed, and the results are not projectable to any population other than the experts in this sample.

Mobile usage in Australia 2010

According to Nielsen, there is a big rise in smartphone ownership and relaxed download caps on mobile phone plans has seen an increase in mobile social networking:

• 43% of online Australians now own a smartphone
• over one quarter of social networkers (26%) participated in mobile social networking in the past year
• 66 % of mobile social networkers are under 35 years of age.

Networking sites accessed by mobile

Facebook is the most popular with 92% of mobile social networkers having visited Facebook, followed by YouTube and Twitter (18%) and MySpace (9%).

Twitter sees the most frequent mobile usage, with half of its mobile users visiting the site daily. In comparison, Facebook saw 36% of its mobile users visit the site daily, while 22% of MySpace users and 16% of YouTube users were making daily visits.

Mobile Usage in America

By way of comparison, Pew Research Centre published statistics on American’s use of the mobile. They don’t have stats on social networking sites but do show a significant increase in internet usage. Compared with a similar point in 2009, mobiles are being used to:

• Take pictures—76% now do this, up from 66% in April 2009
• Send or receive text messages—72% vs. 65%
• Access the internet—38% vs. 25%
• Play games—34% vs. 27%
• Send or receive email—34% vs. 25%
• Record a video—34% vs. 19%
• Play music—33% vs. 21%
• Send or receive instant messages—30% vs. 20%

Source Pew Research Centre – Mobile access 2010

References

Nielsen http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/global/australia-getting-more-social-online-as-facebook-leads-and-twitter-grows

Pew Research Centre http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Mobile-Access-2010.aspx

Australian LinkedIn Statistics

2010

LinkedIn is the largest networking site for professionals in Australia and New Zealand [1]. LinkedIn Australia’s managing director is Clifford Rosenberg, a former Yahoo! Australia-New Zealand managing director, who joined in November, located in Sydney.

• Worldwide LinkedIn has over 70 million members in over 200 countries [2]
• There are 970,000 professionals on LinkedIn as of January 2010 [3]
• Australian LinkedIn growth was in double digits over 2009 [1]
• Australia is one of LinkedIn’s top performing countries, particularly when viewed as a factor of professionals per capita [3]

More Web Metrics

References

[1] http://blog.linkedin.com/2009/12/03/linkedin-australia
[2] http://press.linkedin.com/about
[3] http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/linkedin-pushes-local-growth-social-networking/story-e6frgakx-1225835816746