Bear with me for this somewhat long post, ‘cause I am not only discussing the sweeping changes Gmail made today, but in the end will also tell you what they are going to do next year – or perhaps after that.
Gmail Changes
The Gmail label changes announced today and to be released to accounts slowly (you may not see them yet, I only have them on one account) are ones that I’ve long been waiting for, and that most reviewers seem to underestimate, thinking of them as mere cosmetic or usability changes, i.e. “drag and drop”, “right-side labels retired”..etc. We can always trust good old Lifehacker to call it what it is: Gmail Gives Labels the Folder Treatment.
Folders vs. Labels
Because they are. Folders, that is. Just very few people realize that. The Folders vs. Labels debate is older than the tenancy debates we discussed recently, with two deeply religious camps (apologies for the extreme characterization):
- Those who “just can’t live without folders”, mostly legacy users of Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and mostly Outlook. They are used to folders and won’t learn new concepts, don’t want to change, but are happy spending their life “organizing stuff” and even feel productive doing so.
- The productivity-oriented, innovative types, who switched to Gmail exactly for this reason (labels, conversation threads) and who don’t want to go back the “old way”.
Folders are a very old metaphor, as old as email and documents are. Early email systems physically kept folders in separate files, and even when they were no longer separate files, basic functions like sort, search were limited within individual folders. We got boxed in. We also got used to some of the standard folder features, like drag-and-drop, and the fact that the are listed in the left column – so when Google updated their Docs & Spreadsheets UI about two years ago, the consensus was that the champion of labels reverted to folders.
Folders are Labels
Few realized these were one and the same. The new “folders” were multi-assignable, they behaved like labels. Google was using Folders as a metaphor, but under the hood they continued to use the label mechanism. So let’s clear this once and for all: Labels are really more flexible Folders, with two key criteria:
- They allow multiple assignments (same email may belong to several labels)
- They are purely logical, do not involve moving items (email or documents)
Now, just because I said they are the same, we still tend to use them somewhat differently – we’ve been conditioned to do so.
Label usage really depends on the individual, but when used very intensively, it can get very low-level, granular, and heavy users can accumulate hundreds of labels, even though some of them may be for ad-hoc grouping only. Of course that leads us to the third name for the same thing: tags. Just think of tagging of your photos, or the long list of tags at the bottom of this post.
With such numbers it would be unpractical to display labels / tags in the left sidebar, folder-style, like Gmail does – or it did until today. In fact this has been the very reason why I limited my labeling in Gmail, now wanting to see a jungle in the left column. For a large number of tags / labels, it may be better to display them in a “cloud” that’s scrollable, selectable, and of course searchable. (Note: I have yet to see a really good, find/retrieval oriented tag cloud representation – most are dumb displays.)
Folders, or what we traditionally mean by folders re typically used more sparsely, a user would not have more than a dozen or so, so they can easily be listed in the left sidebar, traditional Outlook..etc style. They would be used passively: click, display, sort, scroll. We tend to think of them as major categories, and often use auto-filters with rules to assign email (or documents): one for the Boss, friends, family, a few for ongoing major Projects…etc. You could not possibly have auto-rules for the hundreds of labels / tags you may want to use.
Not all Labels are Folders
So yes, I admit there is a logical split, but it would be a really bad idea to force users make a decision early on, i.e. when to use folders or labels, because this would result in having to re-organize data later on, when they change their mind or their needs change. Here’s my personal example:
Picasa, Google’s photo management product had had both Folders and Labels from day one. I started organizing my old photos in Folders, since I was conditioned to (that was the Windows legacy for years back), than slowly discovered how much more I can do with Labels – especially when they got enhanced and renamed Albums. But by then half my old data was in Folders, and I never went through the pain of re-organizing my photos.
To avoid the confusion / re-organization, and recognize that folders are really labels, a more refined approach would work:
All folders are labels, but not all labels are folders.
This relationship may be explicit or implied. The explicit relationship means a Folder is essentially a promoted version of a label, getting higher visibility and direct clickability at the left sidebar. The implied relationship, which I think is messier, but exists in systems means the user indeed sees two different entities, in fact still creates Folders and Labels as separate steps, however:
- All Folder names should also be displayed as labels in the cloud / list, and searchable, too
- When a new Folder is created, and the name already exists as a Labels, entries labeled with that name should be assigned to the Folder
With promotion comes demotion: some folders are temporary in nature. For example we’re preparing for a major industry conference on the Fiji Islands (where else) and in the months before and after collect all relevant info under the “Fiji” folder. However, 6 months later the “Fiji project” is no longer high priority, displaying it in the sidebar would be wasting screen real estate. The Folder should be removed, but those items should still be grouped together under the Label Fiji. (Folder got demoted). Again, all folders are labels, but not all labels are folders.
Now Bring Some Goog-ly Smartness
The promotion / demotion process is what Gmail now allows by letting you pick which labels you want shown / hidden from the left sidebar. But why do all this manually? Why not bring some algorithmic smartness in the process? Your email / document management system could not a number of auto-promotions. For example:
- x (configurable) number of the most frequently used labels get listed as Folders on the left panel
- x number of most recently used …
- mix of the above two
- not a mix, but the user switch between most used and recently used Views
- not limited to x number, but the entire list of
labels, sorted according to the above two criteria – essentially
the same effect, since rarely used ones will drop off the page
The demotion process could also be partially automated, but would require more user control, e.g by showing the aging of folders (i.e. no more active/new items assigned) with a different color, fading …etc, so the user can notice and remove them.
This isn’t fantasy-land. Think about it: Google has it in their DNA to dissect and analyze everything you do. It already has all the above information, and they love algorithms.
Care to bet how long before we have Intelligent Folders? My take: before the end of 2010. 2009.
Update: Just as soon as I posted this my main Google Apps account got updated. Playing with the new features it appears that the initial selection of labels to be displayed is based on the most used labels – so Google is already applying some of the algorithmic smartness I am talking about. 
Update #2: For a little demonstration of what kind of chaos you can get into, try adding tags to your Google Reader items, only to find out later you were in fact creating Folders. A major mess 
Related posts:
- Labels: drag and drop, hiding, and more
- Google Moves Gmail Labels to The Left, Jettisons Right-side Labels
- Gmail’s Labels Are More Customizable
- Google Enhances Gmail Labeling With Drag And Drop Feature, Retires Right-Side Labels
- The evolution of Gmail labels
- Gmail’s Labels Now More Like Folders: A Good Thing?
Labels as folders is missing hierarchy. I cannot nest labels within labels, the way I can with folders in Outlook to help organize messages. Hence the 100’s of labels problem.
Yes, I agree. You will NOT get all of the Outlook folder concept, but the ability to assign items to multiple folders/labels is so important IMHO, that it compensates for some of the inconvenience.
The replacement for hierarchies would be joining several labels, i.e. label:firstlabel label: secondlabel in the search box. Ideally there should be a way to do this with a mouseclick – perhaps ctrl-click?
There’s something else: the whole folder/label issue is less important in Gmail than in Outlook. The concept od searching instead of organizing really works.
I’m really mad. I used to have all labels (a bunch
of them) in the right hand column. worked perfectly
on my wide screen using a labs plugin.
This no longer works and i have all my labels in
the left hand column. To top it off, i still can’t
remove the chat or invite panels.
I enjoyed the tutorial….cleared up some things I’ve been wondering about.
Any insight on whether something similar is coming with Yahoo! Mail? I think I read they are due for a major mail product overhaul sometime this Fall.
Your division of people that do not like Google’s recent changes to labels into the Luddite camp is pretty insulting.
Your analysis of Folders vs. Labels is fairly accurate – but your understanding of how Google’s changes to labels scale for people that process and need to organize hundreds maybe 1000’s of emails a day seems to be lacking – as is clear by how you narrowly frame the debate.
Let me return the favor. Anyone that doesn’t understand the huge problems w/ the recent changes concerning labels is clearly a superficial user and a shallow thinker.
As the IT Director for my company and a long time Google fan boy – it is my professional opinion that Google failed w/ the recent changes.
1.) They took away Right side labels functionality
2.) Their current model breaks usability principals for people w/ over 50 labels.
I have 200+ labels – I have to scroll for days to find what I could get in 3 clicks and no keyboarding necessary. I use my Google Apps mail at work as a complex messaging datastore for admin notifications, project management status updates, vendor news et cetera. Much of this is automated via filters.
Using a necessarily complex automated system built on Gmail’s filters & labels actually allowed me to NOT waste my “life organizing stuff” and instead be a “productivity-oriented, innovative type” (as you so smugly put it.)
Using nested labels (via BetterGmail2), in 3 to 5 clicks I could look at my latest backup jobs, I could check on the status of a major wireless PTP project I’m working on w/ a vendor, I could monitor the email threads of my support staff’s attack on an internal upgrade et cetera. ALL automatically filed for me, waiting at a moments click as the innovative work of my day required.
Google’s recent changes has forced me back to the bad old days of Thunderbird as client (via IMAP) where I do hate folders but need the organizing power of them. Gmail’s labels w/ BetterGmail & Right side labels gave me the absolute best innovation any technologist could ever want.
But their current implementation of labels has forced me to use older technology or waste too much time searching for information my projects & innovation initiatives need.
So yes – the new drag and drop is probably awesome for fluff minded marketing mush heads but Real Power users – on the frontier of technology – we require better change from Google – not feature candy.
I have to agree with Thom re: your identity of folder fans as neophobes and label lovers as neophiles – it just isn’t as simple as that. What we are really dealing with here is taxonomy (‘a place for everthing, and everything in its place’) vs tagsonomy (‘you say potato, I say potato’) – it’s a meta data issue. And there is no right and wrong, it is never a case of one always being better than the other.
Certain types of data lend themselves better to taxonomy, whereas others do not. In almost all cases, BOTH systems have some value (if not equal value) and for that reason I think they should exist in parallel and not be muddled together like this. I think you are just plain wrong when you say ‘Folders are Labels’. They aren’t.
The best example I can think of is the classic taxonomy of living things, into domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species. This ‘folder’ system works very well and for a lot of uses is obviously superior to a tagging system like ‘furry, scaly, feathered, smooth-skinned, skinless, large, small, scary, friendly, water-dwelling, flying’, etc.
Neither are perfect however, and when you are trying to classify a platypus (or some data equivalent) you may find yourself inventing branches on your tree just to accommodate it, when simply applying a ‘weird’ tag would better!
@Thom, @JumbleChao,
I obviously had no intention of insulting anyone, but if you read the post again, you’ll find that right there I apologized in advance for the extreme characterization in order to make a point.
Hierarchical folders: yes, I recognize a lot of people will miss them, and a potential solution could be the ability to select multiple labels in a single search. But ideally this would be supported by the graphical UI (ctrl-select?), which is not the case now, so you need to type in complex search criteria.
Keeping BOTH systems: for me “merging” the two results in a streamlined UI, but each to his own.
Case in point: Zoho Mail, which now offers both labels and categories, separately. They are not a favorite with the “innovator types” (an extreme characterization again), but corporate customers with an Outlook culture love it.
Thoughts in a similar vein (with somewhat different conclusions) about folders vs. labels and Google’s motivations in making labels more foldery.
I keep seeing people completely misconstrue the problem here between Labels and Folders.
I think its a truism that the majority of people who want folders can live with the labels.
However, where the real problem is is that you can nest labels natively.
All I want Google to do is take the great Label / Folder system Google Docs uses and plug it into Gmail.
Is it really *THAT* hard?
I keep hearing people say “Labels and folders are the same thing”.
If thats the case then why not let the user decide if he wants LABELS OR FOLDERS.
I would have switch fully from Hotmail to Gmail years ago if they would only add FOLDERS to Gmail.
Oh yeah btw LOVE how insulting your post is to people who want folders instead of labels. Its not that I don’t want to learn how labels work or i’m too old and set in my way its I WANT FOLDERS AND NOT LABELS. How would you feel if you really liked a service like say Gmail but they said “NO LABELS FOR YOU…YOU MUST USE FOLDERS, AND LIKE IT!!!”
(yeah I yell a lot)
You sound a lot like the Linux fan boys who bash anyone who wont switch to Linux from windows. “Linux Rox and Windoze suxs and so do you for using it” What a load of crap.
Im going to assume you just miss-worded what you were trying to say instead of possibly mislabeling you an ass.
Mislabeling? Or misfoldering? 🙂