Thursday, November 11, 2010

Merging Conversations In Gmail


So Adam and I have been talking. He is in San Fran. I am in New York. The Gmail voice chat feature works great. We decided the voice quality on the Gmail voice chat is much better than the one on the Gmail free phone. I have a Google Voice number, he has a Google Voice number. So when I call his number from my number, it feels like rerouting a rerouted call. There is too much white noise. Instead you cut the middle men out and connect directly through the voice chat feature, in many ways better than Skype because chances are you are already logged into Gmail. I mean, do you ever log out?

Adam is stealthily working on this great, great idea that I am not at liberty to talk about.

"I want to hire you," I said.

"I want to hire you," he said.

But then I said - Adam bootstrapping means Anna architecting - for immediate money bring business to my tech consulting - I have 10 engineers in India and I can so totally scale that, any kind of web design, development, front end, back end, anything you need - and I will give you a cut.

Adam being Adam instead gave me a startup idea. His idea, it stays his. And so we have been talking today on that much smaller idea of his, a mini me startup. And we did voice chat and we did email. Ends up email can be quite efficient. Because ideas, thoughts flare up in your mind at their own rhyme and rhythm.

And at several points today I realized Adam had responded to each of the dozen threads we have ended up starting.

And I am thinking, I got a feature idea for Gmail. I should be able to merge conversations. I know these dozen threads are really one thread, so let me bring all of them together.

Gmail needs a feature that allows you to merge conversations.

Gmail is the giant on whose shoulder Facebook took off. Gmail already has the social. If only Google innovated the Gmail platform like Facebook innovates the Facebook platform, Google would not need Facebook envy. The inbox is today like the web was before Google. The web is matter, the inbox is dark matter. There is something very mysterious about the inbox. It remains unfathomable.

"Most New York politicians can't tell one end of the cow from another."
- Bill Clinton
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