Google on Wednesday released a set of themes for Gmail, offering consumers using its Web e-mail service a chance to personalize their messaging environment.
“Gmail fans have been building unofficial extensions to spice up their inboxes for a while, but up ’til now themes haven’t been an integral part of Gmail,” said Gmail engineer Annie Chen in a blog post. “We wanted to go beyond simple color customization, so out of the 30 odd themes we’re launching today, there’s a shiny theme with chrome styling, another one that turns your in-box into a retro notepad, nature themes that change scenery over time, weather driven themes that can rain on your mailbox, and fun characters to keep you in good company.”
Google’s enterprise customers, however, are allowed no such levity: Gmail themes are not available to Google Apps users, a Google spokesperson said.
Google’s personalized home page, iGoogle, has had themes for over a year.
To apply a new theme, select the Settings link in Gmail and click on the Themes tab. Those who don’t have such a tab yet should see one in a few days, as the Gmail update propagates across Google’s servers.
Gmail has been the focus of much attention from Google lately. Last week, Google added voice and video chat to Gmail. About three weeks ago, Gmail gained the ability to send and receive SMS messages, though Google temporarily withdrew that feature in order to fix a show-stopping bug.
Just last month, Google launched seven features for Gmail: Gmail Gadgets, emoticons for messages, Gmail for mobile version 2.0, Canned Responses, contact manager improvements, advanced IMAP controls, and Mail Goggles.
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It’s been roughly 18 months since the last major change to the entry to AOL.com. Now, after revamping its verticals and launching new products like women’s site Lemondrop, AOL is trying a new approach to its portal entry: creating an info hub for third-party email services and social nets while integrating RSS, local news and pop-out “engagement modules.”
The first phase went live tonight with an e-mail module allowing users to check on AOL, Yahoo, and Gmail accounts from the top right-hand of AOL.com and expanded left-hand navigation to various points within AOL. Over the next few weeks, AOL will add an innovative global status update for major social services—write your status once and it shows up on Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, Twitter at the same time—and the ability to follow multiple social net activity through one module from AOL’s front page. Bill Wilson, AOL’s EVP of programming, walked me through the new front page.
The changes don’t stop with e-mail and social nets. Some are skin deep as AOL introduces new color schemes and a more stylish approach, swapping muted pastels for options that include black backgrounds. (Screenshot here.) It may sound purely cosmetic but it gives the portal a new look and feel even tough the basic structure remains the same. On the top left, people can add their own links. AOL Radio will get a top spot. AOL.com also will incorporate “engagement modules” or pop-up players for video, photo galleries, polls and the like that can be moved to other locations on the page to watch video while reading email or the like.
It is an insanely long page but Wilson insists that their click maps show users scroll “if you provide value in the middle of the page as well as the bottom.” Much more detail after the jump.
More on e-mail
Hovering over an e-mail service after login shows the latest messages; composing messages or viewing all mail in an account takes the user off the page. Microsoft’s Hotmail poses a problem though; it can’t be accessed or previewed through AOL.com so AOL is providing a link that can be inserted in one of the module email slots—and a link to Microsoft feedback so people can ask for the feature. In addition to being more open, AOL hopes the e-mail aggregation will help recapture some of the user attention it lost before people leaving the ISP were allowed to keep their AOL addresses. Make it possible for Yahoo e-mail users to scan their inbox from AOL.com and they may stick around.
Leveraging acquisitions
Some of the new content on the front page comes from integrating AOL’s acquisitions. For instance, local news, something AOL hasn’t highlighted before, will be powered by Relegence, the financial news and info technology firm acquired by AOL in late 2006. Relegence, which pulls news and info from more than 3,000 sources, is already powering AOL’s finance, sports and entertainment coverage. Wilson says the portal avoided local news until now because news from nearby big cities tended to overwhelm the result. AOL will use Relegence to provide real-time news pegged to zip codes: “We’re really going to lean into local here.”
– An RSS reader in a module at the bottom will start default categories but can be supplemented by user choices. Recent acquisition Sphere will provide related content from the web; it was integrated quietly into AOL News last week and will be launched across AOL’s network.
Personalization not the goal
Wilson: “We’re not trying to create a replacement for myAOL or iGoogle or My Yahoo. … Based on our experience, personalized sites range usually to under 20 percent of the mainstream. If you look at My Yahoo, it does 20 million where My Yahoo does 90 millions; myAOL is roughly 8 million where our portal is about 48 million. Here, we’re trying to create an experience of great scale for the masses.” Beginning in Q109, though, the front page will start to respond to use. “If you as a user never click on finance news, we would swap that module out and provide you a different module based on things you do click on.” For instance, someone who clicks on style but not finance might get a style feed.
– The e-mail aggregator, social net module and other new features will be available eventually for myAOL.
Advertising
AOL is keeping the 300×600 display ad introduced for the Olympics and is testing placement for sponsored link ads from another acquisition, Quigo. The ads currently are integrated in various modules but the new look has them bundled together on the bottom left. “We’re constantly working with Quigo to determine the best placement for monetization but also leveraging that with the consumer experience.” The engagement modules “are all going to be highly customized from a sponsorship standpoint with rich media. We’ve been sharing that with TV networks and movie studios and some of the CPG as well as retailers.” That’s new advertising in the middle of the screen that doesn’t exist today. Will it pay off in revenue? The inventory being added should provide a boost.
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Google on Wednesday released a set of themes for Gmail, offering consumers using its Web e-mail service a chance to personalize their messaging environment.
