I sometimes post about my company working on the next big "social platform". And we are trying to do things RIGHT - open source, fully distributed (while respecting CAP theorem), people own their own data, etc.
So when it comes to notifications, like in every other area we want to encourage the apps to use "best practices" and only notify people of what they really WOULD want to know about. That means turning down the "slot machine" factor and handing over control over notifications to the people. To do this, we needed to design a standard, expressive interface and "language" that people could use in any app across the platform to quickly indicate what they want.
And here's an overview of how it works withte rest of the system:
Every piece of data in Q (http://platform.qbix.com) is typically stored in a Stream. Which means things like access control (privacy), real time updates (like chat), offline notifications (delivered to any endpoints), etc. are all implemented by the system and available to the app for free.
The user can fine tune notifications settings for any stream or type of stream, and each app can provide Rules with configurable settings and thresholds. For example, a "Groups/activity" published by a user who is in my contacts under a "Friends" or "Family" label and matching my interests would accumulate enough weight to bust through my notification threshhold for sending me an in-app notification, or an email, or an sms. At certain hours of night, my notificaion threshold goes up. When I get into my car, and start moving fast, my notification threshhold goes up until I get out of the car, so only the most urgent things distract me.
And that red badge on the icon? It should earn your trust, like all interface elements it represents a relationship and shouldn't cry wolf. It should NOT show the number of messages waiting for you, but rather show the number of streams with "important" messages posted since you last checked that stream on ANY device.
In short - there are lots of things to solve but they only have to be solved once. That's what we have been working on for over 3 years.
I sometimes post about my company working on the next big "social platform". And we are trying to do things RIGHT - open source, fully distributed (while respecting CAP theorem), people own their own data, etc.
So when it comes to notifications, like in every other area we want to encourage the apps to use "best practices" and only notify people of what they really WOULD want to know about. That means turning down the "slot machine" factor and handing over control over notifications to the people. To do this, we needed to design a standard, expressive interface and "language" that people could use in any app across the platform to quickly indicate what they want.
And here's an overview of how it works withte rest of the system:
Every piece of data in Q (http://platform.qbix.com) is typically stored in a Stream. Which means things like access control (privacy), real time updates (like chat), offline notifications (delivered to any endpoints), etc. are all implemented by the system and available to the app for free.
The user can fine tune notifications settings for any stream or type of stream, and each app can provide Rules with configurable settings and thresholds. For example, a "Groups/activity" published by a user who is in my contacts under a "Friends" or "Family" label and matching my interests would accumulate enough weight to bust through my notification threshhold for sending me an in-app notification, or an email, or an sms. At certain hours of night, my notificaion threshold goes up. When I get into my car, and start moving fast, my notification threshhold goes up until I get out of the car, so only the most urgent things distract me.
And that red badge on the icon? It should earn your trust, like all interface elements it represents a relationship and shouldn't cry wolf. It should NOT show the number of messages waiting for you, but rather show the number of streams with "important" messages posted since you last checked that stream on ANY device.
In short - there are lots of things to solve but they only have to be solved once. That's what we have been working on for over 3 years.