AOL’s got mail, again. On Thursday, the company is beginning its rollout of Alto, a new e-mail program that it hopes will re-establish the company as the e-mailing juggernaut it was in the 1990s.
“Yes, we’re still in business,” stage-whispered David Temkin, a senior vice president of mail and mobile at AOL. “We’re still around.”
The service will be available free to anyone who wants to use it, not just current AOL mail users. Mr. Temkin said the company still had 20 million active e-mail users and was not looking to disrupt their service.
Rather, AOL is trying to introduce a new product that will appeal to its current user base as well as Gmail, Yahoo and Mac mail users, among others.
“The nature of e-mail has changed but the applications have not,” Mr. Temkin said. “But the last thing people want is another e-mail address. They want a better way to manage the e-mail they have.”
One of Alto’s key features is automatic sorting. As mail comes in, it is filtered into stacks, which are similar to folders. The program will automatically look for e-mail from social networks, daily deal sites and retailers, sorting messages into stacks for later perusal. Users can also create their own stacks for e-mail from a particular person, like a partner or a boss, as well as keywords.
E-mail with attachments and photographs is also sorted into stacks. The messages can be browsed quickly and by year. Users can easily mark messages as favorites and “snooze” them, prompting the service to make them reappear after a designated period of time. Alto also allows people to gain access to their Google calendars and Google Drive, a document storage service.
The first version of Alto, a beta test version, will be available only on the Web to start. Eventually it will roll out in versions for tablet computers and mobile phones, Mr. Temkin said. Future features could include a chat function and the ability to read and respond to LinkedIn messages, Facebook mail and direct messages sent through Twitter. In addition, Mr. Temkin said he would like to include alerts on mobile devices concerning e-mail from specific people or companies.
Mr. Temkin said AOL was still figuring out its plan to make money from the service. Although the company plans to steer clear of advertisements, it may try to market special offers and deals to users, he said.
