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Deconstructing PR techspeak

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Gmail cans responses; journalists rejoice!

By Christopher Saunders on October 23, 2008 10:12 AM

What won't the Gmail team think of? First, the folks behind Google's e-mail service began watching our back to make sure we weren't drunk e-mailing. And now, they've done it again: A built-in auto-responder to PR pitches! Huzzah!

OK -- technically, Gmail's new Canned Responses feature is not just for gently rebuffing persistent pitches. But it certainly can't hurt.

Let's take a look. From Google's blog post on the subject:

If you're sick of typing out the same reply every time someone emails you with a common question, now you can compose your reply once and save the message text with the "Canned responses" button. Later, you can open that same message and send it again and again.

It couldn't get any easier unless Gmail automatically pushed the Send button. If you're lazy enough to think that would be a good idea, then read on, friend.

Gmail already lets you create filters based on a combination of keywords, sender, recipients, and more in your incoming messages. Turn on Canned Responses in Labs, and you can set a filter to grab one of your saved responses, create an automated reply, and hit the Send button for you.

That's right -- you can set up a filter to spit out a canned response based on the usual filtering criteria of keywords and sender. As a result, fellow journalist or independent blogger, there's nothing stopping you from creating a filter like this triggered by every instance of buzzword-laden copy to let those hapless PR people down easy (you know, if that's your thing.)

Gmail Canned Responses

Think of the time to be saved!

In a larger sense, I'm glad that the Gmail team continues paying attention to the needs of their users -- and, more importantly, that Google has an apparatus in place to listen to user suggestions and to, occasionally, implement them. Granted, implementing these features does seem to be done somewhat haphazardly. (One day, beer goggles -- the next, canned e-mail responses. Clearly, we mere mortals will never truly understand how Google works.)

So how long before a Google engineer gets on to adding filtering by contact group or merging conversations? Unfortunately, it seems to be anyone's guess.

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