Max Beatty

Social networks are great except you can’t always be there to see everything that’s going on. People are always friending, following, commenting, and direct messaging. The default from the beginning has been to email you about this. Then came the SMS updates from AIM, Twitter, Facebook, and Brightkite even MySpace ::cringe::. Finally, push notifications came to the iPhone and I’m convinced I don’t need anything else.

For me, AOL Instant Messenger was the first service I got SMS updates from. It didn’t matter what number the updates came from before I had an iPhone. When my texts became threaded, I came across a way to keep all my AIM texts in one stream using a vCard with all of their SMS numbers. When Twitter came along, they just had one SMS number which was fine, but then Facebook started offering SMS notifications and they have close to 100 different numbers! I tried to create a proper vCard to duplicate my success with managing AIM, but I could never get it to work properly with Google Apps contacts.

(I have them pushed to my phone and they seem to only allow for one “mobile” number per contact. If you can figure this out, please let me know)

Facebook SMS Updates

Makes for a mess managing text messages, doesn’t it? Email is no better. I’ve setup a Gmail filter for all of my social network accounts just so they don’t clutter my inbox and I’m not even one of those people who gets hundreds or thousands of emails a day. The email notifications, for the most part, don’t really tell me anything and just want me to come back to the site. I don’t gain anything from the notification since I’m going to return to the site anyways and it will tell me all the things that have happened (good sites at least).

Solution: Push Notifications

Instead of getting SMS or email notifications (and somethings both), I would rather get push notifications from my iPhone apps. I have apps for just about every network that sends me any sort of notification (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, AIM, Brightkite, Foursquare). I’ve even considered switching to (or adding) Echofon because it offers push notifications for mentions and DMs.

AIM is my favorite app with push notifications because when I installed their new app it new I had SMS notifications on and switched them to be “pushes” instead for me! It also allows me to keep signed in after I’ve closed the app for up to 24hrs so I can keep receiving IMs if I’m away from my laptop for an extended period of time.

To me, it would make sense for any website that offers SMS or email notifications to develop and deploy push notifications for their iPhone app. When I get push notifications, I don’t need anything else which saves them money in the long run (SMS is expensive). This would also save me money because I may be able to go to the next lowest tier of text messages for my cell plan if I know I can eliminate a couple hundred incoming texts per month.

I know Facebook said they would be adding push notifications to their app later last summer, but their lead developer just quit yesterday so who knows when they’ll add that. Twitter is in the business of letting everyone else build apps around their service so you can’t blame them. I can request Tweetie add push notifications so I’m not tempted to add another app just for that. I’m surprised (and disappointed) Brightkite didn’t add push notifications after their big 2.0 rollout. As a smaller startup who spends a lot of time on their mobile apps, you’d think that it would be higher on their priority list.

Two apps that do it right are Foursquare and ESPN Fantasy Football. I just joined Foursquare and I’m not crazy about it since I haven’t been going out as much lately, but when someone checks in near me I get an innocent push notification instead of a text that costs me money. When I’m sitting on the couch all Sunday (and now Thursday night), I get updates from ESPN about how I’m doing in both of my fantasy leagues. It’ll even notify me if one of my bench players is projected to outscore a starter!

(you can steal this background from me here)

These are all my personal preferences and opinions. I know some people would prefer only getting email notifications and others have never turned on SMS notifications. Most people don’t have an iPhone so push notifications are out for them. Mobile notifications are becoming more prevalent and SMS costs aren’t going down. Both social networks and users alike are looking to save a buck and venders are listening. Just because the phrase “push notifications” is pretty much owned by the iPhone don’t think Android with the Motorola Blur and the Palm Pre aren’t trying to tap into that market with their own social play.

(One step further: why aren’t PayPal, eBay, Chase, Bank of America, and other financial focused apps using push notifications? eBay wants to charge you for SMS updates on auctions, but wouldn’t push notifications be cheaper and drive more people to bid raising their earnings? For the financial institutes who think it might be insecure, I already use Mint because they’ll alert me with push notifications about my accounts with you so what’s holding you back?)