It’s extremely popular, it’s the canonical web 2.0 application and appropriately it’s been in beta forever. Gmail is one of Google’s biggest successes aside from search. Email isn’t the most exciting thing on the Web and a lot of the innovation that goes on with Gmail is a little dull (better integration with this or that, etc). Two recently added features, however, keep Gmail as interesting as anything else bouncing around the hipper edges of the Web application world.

The first came a few weeks ago: Mail Goggles. From the Offical Gmail Blog:

Sometimes I send messages I shouldn’t send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. Gmail can’t always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we’re launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.

When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you’re really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you’re in the right state of mind?

By default, Mail Goggles is only active late night on the weekend as that is the time you’re most likely to need it. Once enabled, you can adjust when it’s active in the General settings.

It’s sort of a joke, sort of not. Gmail’s core user group is certainly more likely than the general population to either get the joke or potentially even seriously benefit from the service. The ability and willingness to use Gmail (it can be reasonably assumed) is more frequent among younger users. It’s probably less so among the population with aging Yahoo or AOL addresses or those who simply stick with a company email.

Yesterday Gmail announced another interesting addition: Canned Responses. Again, their blog:

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.

ReadWriteWeb also posted about the new feature today, their screen-shot:

There’s a certain element of kitsch here. Even in the way the Gmail blog describes them, these seem more like gags than technological advancements. They’re based on an assumed user who is prone to Web-mediated late night weekend indiscretions and is rather lazy in their daily correspondence. Some might see it as a pretty unflattering picture.

On the other hand, it’s not as though either of the new capabilities are outlandish or useless propositions. It’s true that they might save a few users embarrassment or time, respectively. And it’s the fact that these two changes sort of straddle the line between serious and unserious that makes them interesting. In both nature and presentation, they aren’t objectively good, morally neutral improvements. They’re not productively features (at least not the goggles, the canned responses might be if they were called something a little more dignified); they’re lifestyle features.

This is important. There are many, many redundant Web 2.0 services and applications. For example does the world need tumblr, Posterous, Publr, Soup and Streem–all of which recently came on the scene offering exactly the same micro-blogging functions? Maybe not. But maybe one or more will differentiate themselves by including the sort of character-enhancing features that Gmail has. After all, establishing an identity based on an aesthetic designed to appeal to a particular user identity can only go so far if it doesn’t change the nature of the product. Many Web 2.0 sites try to convey an attitude, but this is usually a superficial proposition–Gmail is doing something more.