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Ask HN: How to manage multiple email addresses with Google+
Pardon me if this is a dumb question. But I have friendsandfamily@gmail.com, onlinehackerpersona@gmail.com, and contractor@myfreelancecompany.com. I obviously have intentionally structured my email addresses by the circles I want to communicate with.
So Google+ has come out with Circles, which solves this problem in a different way: manage your circles with just one email address (identity). But I've got multiple gmail addresses. What do I do now? What are other people doing? Am I misunderstanding something?
- gnubardt 15y agoYou can enable multiple sign in in your account settings page. It lets you switch between accounts very quickly and doesn't require re-authenticating each time. https://www.google.com/accounts/b/0/MultipleSessions https://www.google.com/accounts/b/0/MultipleSessions
- techiferous 15y agoThis means I would manage several different Google+ accounts, right? I would have to set up my circles on each one. At first that sounds redundant to the purpose of Google+, but maybe that's okay? Maybe the Circles are really the subcircles of my individual accounts?
- spooneybarger 15y agoI'm in the same boat. My solution has been to only use G+ for one of those purposes.
- cmelbye 15y agoOut of curiosity, why did you structure your emails like that? Personally, I used to have multiple addresses for different purposes but realized I didn't have a reason for doing it. I created a new address using myfirstname.mylastname@gmail.com and I use that for everything now (including Google+).
- techiferous 15y ago> Out of curiosity, why did you structure your emails like that? About ten years ago I had a junk email I used for web sites, separate from the one I used for friends and family. So as an anti-spam measure. A couple of years ago when I started my online programmer persona, I used persona@gmail.com for continuity. The system has actually worked pretty well for me, apart from having to manage lots of accounts in my mail client. > but realized I didn't have a reason for doing it. That step didn't happen to me until now. Now what?
- gregpilling 15y ago>Now what? Select your favorite email address, and forward the others to it. If your favorite is your gmail, then have the incoming emails automatically tagged with a label appropriate for where it is coming from (you may wish to use "family", "hacking" "work" etc).
- techiferous 15y agoThis is an option I'll definitely consider. Is Google+ designed to actually work seamlessly this way? In other words, will people interacting with my Google+ presence through my friendsandfamily@gmail.com have the same experience as those interacting with my Google+ presence through my onlinehackerpersona@gmail.com? Also, I've got two invites: one for onlinehackerpersona@gmail.com and one for friendsandfamily@gmail.com. Which one do I take? If I choose one, do I lose the connection with the other person and have to re-invite them?
- wh-uws 15y agoCan't speak for that person but I do it because I like to keep the different parts of my life compartmentalized. When I'm thinking about I clients I don't want to see personal stuff and vice versus.
- damoncali 15y agoI don't know, but this is a big problem for me as well. I have several gmail based email, analytics, adwords, adsense, etc. accounts and use them all. I keep Chrome Safari and Firefox running so I can be logged into a different account on each browser at the same time, but I'm running out of browsers.
- danoprey 15y agoYou may already know this, but you can double your amount of sign ins by opening an incognito window in each browser.
- tbh2347 15y ago+ chrome canary build!
- unicornporn 15y agoor you can just use multifox for firefox.