To push, pull or ping?

Notifications are incredibly useful but only when the information is important. You wouldn't want the bat phone on silent, but you also don't want it ringing to be sold insurance.

I realised how badly my notifications were configured when a comment on Facebook caused my phone to ping and two computers to make a noise. Thats a lot of attention. So that's an email sent an a push notification to my phone.

I've started to reconfigure all of this because of the level of annoyance. The problem is that the levers that I have to use are all a bit unsubtle. Email or not, notify or not.

What about importance and engagement? I'm not talking about AI a few simple rules would do it, they actually manage it pretty well with the feed. Can't be hard to detect if I'm actively engaged in a conversation or just chiming in to cause trouble.

The intelligence doesn't actually have to be in the service that your interacting with there could easily be a middle man service that you forward everything to. I would have to work out two things, the importance of the message (hard) and where you are.

If its important sent a push and have it make a noise, make of note of whether I have seen it. If I havent make sure that it shows up when I move to a different device. For less important information queue it up into a feed that can be looked at later.

This isn't a spam filter, its something more I think. Google are getting there with voice which does part of the job, maybe of Apple could come up with a similar service and roll their push notification into it that might get half way there.