Emails, for the most part, are static, but Google today launched a new Gmail feature that makes Google+ events notifications more interactive. Gmail users will now be able to invite friends, read and respond to comments, and RSVP right from inside their inboxes. Google+ users will also be able to share photos that were attached to the event. Earlier this year, Google introduced interactive Google+ email notifications, which allow Google+ users to view, comment and +1 posts from Gmail without having to leave the application. Today’s launch brings a very similar set of features to Google+ events.

Typically, email clients don’t allow this kind of functionality because of security concerns. Microsoft’s Hotmail started whitelisting a number of companies like Orbitz and Netflix to allow them to display more interactive content in their emails in late 2010. Google, so far, is only making these features available to these two different kinds of Google+ messages.

Google launched Google+ events in June. Many people’s first reaction to the new feature was rather negative, as it felt very spammy to users who had many Google+ followers. Google has since fixed most of these issues.

As we noted when we first wrote about Google’s interactive Google+ notification emails, there are a number of other companies that are also trying to turn emails into more of a platform by making it more interactive. PowerInbox, for example, uses a browser plugin and API to enable some interesting features in many web-based and desktop email clients.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

What do you do when you have more than a billion potential product combinations on your site? You hire a user experience (UX) guru. Gemvara, a jewelry e-commerce site that lets consumers custom-design their own jewelry, just acquired Snipwits, a one-man startup founded by Brian Kalma, who will now be in charge of the customer experience team at Gemvara. Kalma previously headed up UX design at both Zappos (as one of its first employees) and Gilt Groupe.

Kalma will tackle the challenge of helping customers narrow down a billion choices down to something they will actually buy. Gemvara uses no photographs. All of its images are virtual inventory (computer generated renderings), since customers can mix and match gemstones and metals to create their own rings, necklaces, and earrings.

The Boston-based company is growing rapidly, on track to triple its revenues this year from “several million last year,” CEO Matt Lauzon tells me. (Boston, apparently, is where it’s happening this week).

While this was very much an acqhire (the acquisition price was not revealed), Snipwits will continue to exists a sa stand-alone product and parts of it may become integrated into Gemvara. Snipwits is a peer-to-peer learning platform. Getting gem-browsing customers to teach each other about different kinds of gems and rare metals could be one way to get them more comfortable about parting with $840 for a ring they never get to touch before it arrives in the mail.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Today at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA host David Kirkpatrick sat down with Reid Hoffman and Sean Parker to talk about what follows social media. Specifically, Kirkpatrick asked the two what follows the social networks like Facebook?

Parker was quick to answer. “If I had an answer to that, I’d probably already be working on it,” he half-joked. But he elaborated to say that the idea there is one digital paradigm that exists at any moment is a fallacy. And the idea that something else is going to come along and kill it is largely created by the media.

He continued to say that obviously there will be different kinds of things in the digital world 10 years from now. But he said he doesn’t think the day-to-day engagement of Facebook will change significantly in that timeframe. He quickly caught himself to include the other social networks in that bucket too. He thinks there will be more things that augment these networks.

Hoffman also said that he doesn’t think social goes away 10 years from now. “We are social animals,” he said. He thinks that instead it will be about the evolution of social. Right now it’s largely about surfing, but soon it will be more purpose-driven, he believes.

“Social is the foundation on which things are built,” Hoffman said.

Clearly, both also don’t remember that we were all supposed to quit Facebook.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch