Ask HN: how could email be better?

[cangrande]

How could email be better?

Right now a lot of people just leave emails unread and then come back to them. This seems inefficient.

Does treatment of emails depend on what kind of email you receive? (e.g. facebook messages vs. broadcast emails) Meaning it needs to be split up more?

[nemoel]

With the growth of social media email notifications (from facebook, twitter, asw, etc...) I wake up every morning to about 40 emails. A method to filter these into groups - event type emails which include fb, twitter and broadcast emails versus personal emails would make my life so much easier and my email a lot less cluttered.

Another way to improve email is to find a way to deal with unread emails- so you need some sort of 'interim' board where you can drop emails you want to deal with later on.

Obviously these are only a couple of ways that email could become a better and more efficient tool...I am certain there is scope for more suggestions.