4/12/2004 05:50:00 PM

Forbes is running the first hands-on review of Gmail here. The snippet below interested me. It seems that, at least at this stage, Gmail is allowing users to build rudimentary taxonomies to organize their correspondence. This logical structure will do away with the old folder metaphor allowing for a single piece of data to logically reside in multiple places within the taxonomy.

I like.

...Organizing messages from your inbox is also different with Gmail. Gmail's approach is to use labels, instead of folders, which allows messages to have overlapping types.

For instance, you might subscribe to a mailing list where you discuss politics, but also correspond privately about politics and other things with a personal friend, with whom you're also making vacation plans. If a message from your friend addresses both an ongoing political discussion and vacation plans, it can be labeled as "politics" and "vacation." On the left side of the inbox screen you can click on these labels and instantly see all the messages labeled as politics or vacation or whatever you want.