Gmail just got more reactive. Google is bringing emoji reactions to its email service, allowing users to add personality to their messages. Reactions Google is bringing emoji reactions like a thumbs up, party popper and a laughing face to Gmail.
  • @[email protected]
    25•2 years ago

    Eh… They chose to use the email protocol to send each emoji?! So external users or third-party clients (or school and work accounts for some reason) will be spammed. Won’t a bunch of gmails get marked as spammers then?

    • Skull giver
      19•2 years ago

      There’s an RFC for this, similar to how there’s an RFC for responding to RSVPs. Some mail clients (Outlook) decide to hide them or show them with a bunch of details, others will give you the plaintext description of the RSVP response.

      In this case, if your email client doesn’t support the RFC, you’ll get a single email in the mail thread with an emoji (if viewing plaintext mode) or, more likely, a description like “Steve responded with 🔝” from the HTML MIME part.

      As this is legitimate mail (that notably is a reply to another email with a valid message ID for the recipient) I don’t think has any spam implications.

        • Skull giver
          8•2 years ago

          RFC9078, which is currently experimental but still standardised.

          There’s no need to change standard for email because of its extensibility through headers and MIME types, so I don’t think the RFC needs to be upgraded all the way to Internet Standard for it to be relevant in this case.

          I think this is an incredibly silly standard, though. I don’t see the need for emoji reactions under email and I doubt it’ll solve any real world problems, but the people who do see value in it may as well use it.

          RSVP stuff is done through RFC 5545 and its many updates, I believe, though there’s also an RFC for resource reservation which has RSVP in its title.

          • @[email protected]
            3•2 years ago

            Thanks :). I’ve actually been looking for the RSVP stuff and I wasn’t sure which RFC to look through (wasn’t sure if it was in the CalDAV one or the iCalendar one… and they’re weirdly huge). I appreciate you pointing me in the right direction!

            Also was curious how they were implementing reactions in e-mail. I actually think it’s a good feature, and it’s one that’s slowly been making it into XMPP and stuff. Emoji reactions and stuff sound kind of dumb and like a “whatever, who cares?” feature, but I find that on platforms like slack they’re actually a really good way to deal with quickly confirming something / finalizing decisions / quickly gauging the opinion of a group. I think a huge problem with e-mail and instant messaging is that they can be quite noisy, so having a “quiet” way to respond without having a thread explode is actually pretty welcome in my opinion.

  • Granixo
    6•2 years ago

    Great!

    More reasons to use Gmail Go or an alternative e-mail client. 🤓🖥️

  • SLaSZT
    12•2 years ago

    I’m struggling to think of a use case for this. Why not just reply and put an emoji in there?

      • @[email protected]
        6•2 years ago

        I would think just email. Who uses email for anything other than formal communication anymore where it would be inappropriate to use emoji reactions?

        Reactions are fine for casual messaging, but email just isn’t that kind of social platform.

        • bermudaEnglish
          2•2 years ago

          I assume it’s to cut down on wasted space from “thumbs up” and “Okay” emails.

      • livEnglish
        2•2 years ago

        Yes, it’s a massive level of cringe.

        Gmail is convenient, but if it’s about to be filled with 😊 and 👍 then I’ve got to stop using it for any serious communication.

    • falsem
      15•2 years ago

      I work at a large company so get a lot of emails. This could conceivably cutdown on the amount of “Nice job!” type emails that don’t really have much substance.

      • OtterEnglish
        5•2 years ago

        Oh that’s a good point, it could help in professional settings

    • @[email protected]English
      11•2 years ago

      Outlook has had this for a while, and I use it a fair bit to acknowledge that I’ve read the email, but without actually replying.

  • @[email protected]
    65•2 years ago

    HR: This email is to inform you of concerns about your professionalism in the workplace.

    Me: 👍 🎉 😂