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AOL to organize email clutter

NEW YORK — The Internet icon that bought email to the masses with its classic “You’ve got mail” slogan now wants to help people organize the flood of messages in their Gmail, Yahoo Mail and other accounts.

AOL Inc. launched Alto on Thursday. It’s not a new email service. Rather, Alto works in concert with other email accounts to clean out and organize messages, social network notifications, daily deals, photos and email attachments. The service is available for free by invitation to users in a closed “beta” test.

Users can set up Alto so that mass emails, such as those from retailers or daily deals sites, skip their inbox entirely and show up only in Alto. Instead of a text-based list that people are used to in email, Alto uses what it calls “stacks.” These take up most of the application’s main page.

• From wire dispatches and staff reports