Social Networking sites send a lot of e-mail, and I mean a lot. After being active on a handful of these sites for a while, I got tired of seeing all those notifications in my inbox. In order to take back my attention span, I set up a handful of Gmail filters to keep social networking e-mails out of view until I decide to review them.
- Problem: Social networking sites send me a lot of e-mail.
- Caveat: Some of them are useful. Instead of unsubscribing, I’d like to review them at my leisure instead of immediately upon arrival.
- Solution: Gmail filters hide social networking e-mails until I decide to take a look.
What are these filters?
A Gmail filter is a rule you can define which instructs Gmail to examine incoming messages and automatically perform specific operations whenever a certain set of criteria are met. My filters tell Gmail how to identify which messages are from social networking sites, and to then move those messages out of my inbox and into a “Social Networking” folder. This keeps them out of sight until I decide it’s time to sort through them. These filters let me keep on top of all this activity without being buried underneath.
Basics of setting up a Gmail filter
The first step of creating a filter is to define the search criteria. This is the part where you instruct the Gmail system on how to spot incoming messages from social networking sites.
As you can see from the above screenshot, any or all of the following fields can be used to examine incoming messages:
- From – Match messages from specific senders.
- To – Match messages sent to specific e-mail addresses. Helpful if you manage more than one account with Gmail.
- Subject – Look for certain keywords or phrases in message subjects.
- Has the words – Look for certain words or phrases in the body of incoming messages.
- Doesn’t have – Match messages that do not contain certain keywords or phrases.
The second step for creating a filter is to choose which actions to take when an e-mail matches your search criteria. In the following screenshot, you’ll notice that my search criteria matches any messages sent from facebook.com or facebookmail.com addresses.
There are a variety of actions you can set up — archive messages, mark them as read, star them, apply a label, forward the message, delete it or exempt it from your spam folder. You may use multiple actions — my “social networking filter” archives incoming messages and applies the label “Social Networking”.
You can define an unlimited number of Gmail filters (however only 20 may foward messages).
Example Filters
Now that you are familiar with the process for setting up a Gmail filter, you can examine the e-mails you receive and look for common properties with which to define search criteria. To give you some ideas, here are a few of the filters I have set up:
Flickr Group Invitations
Matches: subject:([Flickr] You’ve been invited)
Do this: Skip Inbox, Apply label “Social Networking”
Facebook Notifications
Matches: from:(*@facebook.com OR *@facebookmail.com)
Do this: Skip Inbox, Apply label “Social Networking”
Twitter E-mails
Matches: from:(noreply@twitter.com OR *@postmaster.twitter.com)
Do this: Skip Inbox, Apply label “Social Networking”
As you can see, I have found that it is easy to filter out e-mails from social networking sites by looking at the sender’s e-mail address.
