Archive for August, 2009
Facebook Email Notification Improvement Suggestions
I love Facebook’s usability. But I found their email notification implementation highly unusable or rather annoying at some times.
1. Commented on which status?
The common use case is – you post some status update and your friends comment on it. Now, as an average user, I generally post 2-3 updates on my Facebook profile. But when Facebook sends me email notification, it sends me a message something like this -
Facebook Status Comment Notification Email
As shown above, all it says – “<Your friend> commented on your status: <Friend’s comment>”. But I’ve no idea on which status my friend commented on. They deliberately made sure that I’ve no clue about which status it was, and I better login to their site and give them some pageviews. I hate it. All they have to send me -
“<Your friend> commented on <Your status>: <Friends’ comment>” – just fill in the value of your actual status! So simple! I just get it on which status my friend commented on, and that comment starts making sense to me. Otherwise without the context, I’ve no way to understand what that comment means.
2. Follow the link to reply?
Another use case is – if I receive comment, then I can’t reply that comment by sending “Reply” button of my email program. Why I’ve to login to their site just to reply to that comment thread? My comment thread is actually right now in my email inbox. It tells me what comment my friend posted, then if I’ve to reply to it, I’ll just hit the reply button and will send my comment via email. It should get posted directly to the status thread on Facebook.
Though, this not an annoying issue, but sometimes if I receive 3-4 comments during day time, then I read those comments in my email, but generally postpone replying to it on Facebook till evening – and most likely, I’ll forget what was my instant reaction to friend’s comment was and will lose its continuation.
But having this ability will increase the instant communication. And I don’t think it’s that hard to implement this feature – especially when it makes users’ life more convenient.
If you have different observations, then please let me know your views in the comment section!
