Do you like getting notifications in Google Plus? Does your heart race every time you see that red box scroll into view? Have you used the new notification tools to make sure you get lots and lots of notifications?
Perhaps you should pause and think about the best way you can use notifications. Here are some of my thoughts.
I think this feature isn't really about making sure I see every message I want to see - I think of it as making sure I see every message I don't want to miss. Lots of things in my stream are great - and I read my stream often to make sure I see them all. But sometimes I get busy. Or sometimes I have a lot of stuff in my stream and I''ll miss some things.
If I turned all of these into notifications - that red number would never stop spinning!
Instead, I think of all of these as messages that I'll probably read anyway - so I don't need the reminder to go look at them. But a few things are important to me. These are messages that I want to make sure I don't miss - no matter what else I might be doing. The people who send me these messages are in my "Alert" circle, and I have that circle set to send a notification (and an email) when a message comes in.
But I don't always use the red box to read them. Sometimes I'm busy, so to make sure I see these messages, I'll use Gmail to read the notifications. This is also a good place to mark them in case I need to followup in more detail later, or file them away. When I do reply, I can reply right from Gmail.
There are lots of strategies to help you manage these notifications in Gmail, and we'll be covering some of them in the future. In the meantime, why don't you share with us some of your tips for managing your notifications?
I'm Allen Firstenberg for Oasis in the Stream
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