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New Push Notifications improvements discussion
After waking up to many Push Notifications from Gowalla (all of which are people I follow), I had to scratch my head a bit. I've only had Push turned on for a few select friends (as I'm quickly building up a Gowalla network; I didn't want a flood of Pushes all day long). Now after this blog post, Push Notification was turned on for every single friend.
I can definitely see how it was made easier to enable Push, but I don't know if enabling it for everyone was the right approach. Any thoughts or rationale?
Granted, I only have 25 friends, but many are in a time zone 6 hours ahead of me, so while they're checking in while getting to work; I'm still sleeping :). I do not enable push for those friends. But for my local Gowalla friends, it makes more sense.
I figured some others would want to chime in on this topic as well; so here we are! Discuss!
Bottom line, I like being able to enable Push Notifications from the web UI, but I think enabling it for all of my friends was a poor decision.
I can definitely see how it was made easier to enable Push, but I don't know if enabling it for everyone was the right approach. Any thoughts or rationale?
Granted, I only have 25 friends, but many are in a time zone 6 hours ahead of me, so while they're checking in while getting to work; I'm still sleeping :). I do not enable push for those friends. But for my local Gowalla friends, it makes more sense.
I figured some others would want to chime in on this topic as well; so here we are! Discuss!
Bottom line, I like being able to enable Push Notifications from the web UI, but I think enabling it for all of my friends was a poor decision.
I’m a little disappointed
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Hey Matthew (and Dr. P) — Thanks for your feedback and sensitivity to this change. We debated a bit internally on how we should handle the transition.
Upon doing some research we found that the vast majority of Gowalla users didn't even know that the push notification feature existed. And most users also have a relatively small list of friends.
We're sorry that it took us a few extra minutes to get that email out there regarding how to manage the notifications from the web.
Also, William — we'll be adding some sort of "sleep" feature soon so that you can turn notifications off during the hours you don't want to hear from friends.
Thanks again for your feedback. Hopefully we can manage transitions like this a bit more gracefully in the future.
I’m sorry we let you down.
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Inappropriate?Personally, I would have preferred the default for Push Notifications for all friends to OFF, rather than ON. Moreover, because I wasn't yet aware that the web site had the ability to manage this feature, I went through each friend, individually, through the iPhone app to turn them all back off.
I think the added bonus for including the "Twitter/Facebook" post to the push notification along with where the friend checked in is a nice upgrade, but I still think this notification should be in the hands of the user checking in, not the friends of that user. Basically, despite not making a tweet along with my check in, people can still see my check-ins live as they happen whether I wanted them to or not. For me, that invades my privacy just a scootch.
(To be clear, I use this app to let people know where I've been. I don't want to get on people's nerves, however, if I go on an evening like I did some months back wherein I checked into some 35+ spots within about 2 hours; that's exactly what would irritate some. Nor would I necessarily want even my friends know what I am doing – in case, y'know, I am making a trip or planning something special.)
I’m still mostly indifferent on this particular feature.
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Yeah, I'd really like a 3rd toggle on the check in screen for the push notifications.
I went through 3 friends on the iPhone app before thinking - there has got to be a better way to do this! And there was. -
Agreed, we need the 3rd On/Off toggle for "send Push notification" when checking in.
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Inappropriate?Hey Matthew (and Dr. P) — Thanks for your feedback and sensitivity to this change. We debated a bit internally on how we should handle the transition.
Upon doing some research we found that the vast majority of Gowalla users didn't even know that the push notification feature existed. And most users also have a relatively small list of friends.
We're sorry that it took us a few extra minutes to get that email out there regarding how to manage the notifications from the web.
Also, William — we'll be adding some sort of "sleep" feature soon so that you can turn notifications off during the hours you don't want to hear from friends.
Thanks again for your feedback. Hopefully we can manage transitions like this a bit more gracefully in the future.
I’m sorry we let you down.
The company says
this answers the question
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This answers the question
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The lack of knowledge of the push notifications might be down to the lack of instructions/FAQs you've been promising! I don't think switching them on for everyone was the right option, particularly for those who know how to switch them on and had chosen a few select friends, not every friend.
I've not been near a computer since this change and the notifications are driving me crazy. Like JC, they've killed my iPhone battery and switching off each individual friend through the app is a right royal pain! I don't want to switch the notifications off in the Settings, as I still want to know about where a few select friends have been. -
Inappropriate?My two concerns:
1. First and foremost, there is no sound associated with a Gowalla push notification. So unless you're looking at your phone when the notification comes in, you won't know it actually arrived. This is a app-level feature, and I'm assuming you guys are working on this for the next update, so no biggie.
2. Since there's no real "official" way to play Gowalla, users could inadvertently bombard their friends with notifications. Like Dr. P, there are plenty of times where I've checked into 35+ places in a very short period of time (mainly because spots are being created a lot closer to each other). Since notifications are opt-out by default, all my friends are now going to hate me.
Is it/would it be possible to turn off notifications when the app is open? I ran into this a few times while Gowalling with my girlfriend, but when notifications pop up in the middle of a check-in, it makes things get messy.
I'd like to see the ability to customize notifications, as in only receive them if your friends check-in to a spot within a certain distance from the last place you checked in, or to turn them off during a certain period of time. From the sound of it, it seems like you guys are working on the latter (woo!).1 Comment Add a comment
This answers the question
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We're going to continue to improve the push features to give you a bit more control. We agree that there is much to improve here.
I do like having the ability to turn them off when the app is open. We'll have to look into that one.
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