Review of SNARF: Social Network and Relationship Finder
Stumble It!Microsoft Research tool sorts your email inbox by importance
Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best – in this case automatically ‘triaging’ inbound email by user defined importance. SNARF allows the user to design their own personal email importance criteria such as the "number of emails sent to me in the last month". Such metrics can, in turn, be combined to create overall importance criteria for sorting your inbox.
For more details on SNARF plus system requirements and free download click
I was unable to review SNARF in action, as I am running Outlook Express, however I did review the excellent research paper on how SNARF Triage works and have two observations:
Firstly automated social sorting is a neat idea - to be able to assign, on an individual basis a series of 'social metrics' and have them automatically computed from the current and historical email traffic and then to be able to sort your inbox by them.
Secondly, and perhaps I am missing something, I wonder if there is a much simpler social filtering email solution that would work in 80% of the cases using fixed categories such as:
- VIP
Those we will always respond to quickly - top customer, mother, dentist - there may be no email traffic pattern to analyse here.
- Awaiting Reply
Those who we have sent a recent email and not yet got a closure reply
- Regular Communicator
Those where there is a current history of email message-reply 'pairs'
- The Rest
Anybody else
Digg | 
del.icio.us | 
Reddit | 
Yahoo! | 
Add to my favourites
Bioteams Books Reviews
Predictably Irrational teams
Teams, networks, groups and their members behave in an irrational way but quite predictably so. A good team leader will understand this and use it to everyone’s advantage. One key point is to knowing each team members motivations and whether they are operating in “social economy” or “market economy” mindsets.
Buy it now from:
Amazon.Com
Amazon.Co.UK
Related Social Networking Articles
Social software group dynamics: Clay Shirky
One of the papers I re-read lately is Clay Shirky's landmark speech at ETech in 2003 "A group is its own worst enemy" where he identifies 4 principles for social software/social network design. These principles are every bit as relevant today as they were 5 years ago.
The Web2.0 Business Development System
Social Network Design: The Network Is A Living System, Design It As Such
What are the key requirements for social software to create social environments and communities that can become self-sustainable? Ken Thompson and Robin Good suggest the answer can be found in the ground-breaking "theory of living systems" developed by two famous Chilean biologists and referred to as autopoiesis.
Leave a comment