Is your e-mail Inbox flooded with mailing list messages? Mine is. Every week I receive about a dozen e-mails from Buddhist groups I join. I have applied filters based on senders, but this is not very effective as senders sometimes change their e-mail addresses.
Recently, I learned another method to filter mailing list messages, using Gmail’s ‘plus addressing’ feature. This is how it works:
Assuming that your Gmail address is supermario@gmail.com, and you have joined a Nintendo group. You can generate another e-mail address, say supermario+Nintendo@gmail.com, and give it to the group you join. Now you can set up filter to automatically archive or label the messages addressed to supermario+Nintendo.
But seriously, mailing list is sooooooo 2005. Today groups and organizations can provide updates to their members through Internet forums, blogs, Facebook and Twitter. Perhaps the only time when e-mail is still necessary is for sending attachments other than pictures and video clips.
Updating through social networking sites has some added advantages. First, the messages in forums and blogs can be easily searched using Google or tags. Second, rather than passive recipients of information, the members can drop comments and participate in discussion. (The second point is also true for Facebook.) Last but not least, every time an e-mail is forwarded, its format changes, e.g. character ‘>’ is inserted to the beginning of each line. There is no such problem with ‘new media’.
Mailing list is still required, much as we still surf Net with PC in the age of smart phone. However, I would like to see its role shrinking.
Actually I seldom use email...unless it is for official matter. :p
ReplyDeletefor my case, i receive losts of spam mails and weird training emails via office email, wonder how that can happened....-_____________-
ReplyDeleteso usually i will block it!!!
Sometimes junk mail gets through my office email. I also wonder how come it can get through.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a huge fan of mailing lists and newsletters because like you said, thanks to social medias, they are not very useful anymore.
ReplyDeleteIn the office, I use folders to capture subscriptions. In fact, folders are what's helping me sort mail so mails can be read according to priority, i.e., email-sender. Our filter system is updated periodically and pretty efficient in blocking spam.
ReplyDeleteOn the home-front, GMail leaves much to be desired. Oh well..
yeah, i have no idea how they get my email and forwarded me all kinds of emails.. really frustrating sometimes..
ReplyDeleteooh, got such feature for gmail ah?? i didn't know about that leh.. anyway, seldom use my gmail also lah..
ReplyDeleteyeah, it's not the latest trend by mailing list already.. look at how people uses social networking like FB.. but i think the mailing list still works for some "older" generation though..
ReplyDeleteerrr, not every forward message will come with > in front, it actually depends on your settings.. you can always remove the option to add the > in your message..
ReplyDeletei guess i welcome mailing list, but not to the extent of flooding and spamming lor..
ReplyDeleteYes, my Inbox is flooded with mailing list messages, currently standing at over 600! I am going to delete all of them soon!
ReplyDeleteOh good tips on how to filter the emails! But what if I use Yahoo Mail?
ReplyDeleteYes I agree - with Twitter and FB, mailing lists are no longer relevant! Way to go, Twitter and FB! : )
ReplyDelete