News > Geek > You've Got Mail... It Says You've Got Mail.

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MONDAY JULY 23 2007 4:00 AM

You've Got Mail... It Says You've Got Mail.

Submitted by seanbonner

Edited by erin_broadley

Tags: email, messages, site mail, private messages, messaging

A few months ago I was sitting in a cafe in San Francisco showing off my new phone and decided to check my e-mail, an extremely uncharacteristic move on my part actually but a spur of the moment decision I ran with. Amid the mass of temporarily ignorable subject lines was a heading telling me that a good friend of mine had sent me a new message via Facebook. I quickly opened the email hoping to read whatever she'd just written me, but was instead given a link to follow in which to read the message on Facebook. I spent the better part of the next hour trying to either figure out how to get to that part of Facebook with only the phone I had, actually log in with a mobile device, and finally giving up and then being anxious until I was able to read it hours later from a proper laptop.

I've got a similar story about getting an e-mail telling me I had an e-mail from a friend but had to login to a site to read it only to find the site was down and remained that way for the next several hours. This drove me insane especially since they'd already sent me a message, who not just send me THE message rather than making me come to the site to read it. The answer of course boils down to pageviews. Sites get extra traffic when you need to log in to read inter-site mail and are afraid of losing that by sending you the actual message. Sometimes just logging in to see the message is painless, but sometimes it's an absolute nightmare. The worst offender in this, of course, is MySpace and that is in part why I deleted my account in utter frustration last year and haven't ever looked back.

This seems to be the default when a website begins to offer some kind of private messaging. Some sites call it mail, others call it direct or private messages, but it's all the same - a note from one person to one specific other person. I made this spreadsheet off the top of my head using a handful of sites that offer this option to their users. Of the 12 sites I used as examples, only five of them actually sent me the full message when someone sent me something using their system. The other seven required me to log in to see the note, unfortunately SG is in the "make me log in to read it" category. I publicly asked last month if I really needed another inbox because that's the role many of these sites are trying to fill.

The fact is I already have an inbox, and when I get messages there I like to read them. I don't want to be told that I have to go to some other inbox to see a note someone sent me. That's not a good thing for the user, it's creating extra steps and makes me feel like I'm being punished for using that sites particular system. On the other hand when I get a notification from a site like Twitter or Plazes that includes the actual message that someone was trying to send me I always think what a nice feature that is and am glad the folks at those sites understand this simple concept - Don't send me mail to tell me I've got mail, just send me the mail and skip the extra steps.

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Comments

Gerry_D

Los Angeles, CA

May 2003

JUL 23, 2007 12:24 PM

yeah, I flushed my myspace a while ago - and I really try not to sign up for anything with notifications at all - but its impossible of course.

malkav11

Saint Paul, MN

July 2003

JUL 23, 2007 12:25 PM

dave_sector said:
I just dont bother reading them anymore

I'm just imagining this as read by HAL9000.

xazapdmytinu

Fort Collins, CO

July 2007

JUL 23, 2007 04:33 PM

Keri said:

Cigarette said:

And get offa my lawn!

hehe.

Lexiphanic

Australia

August 2005

JUL 23, 2007 06:41 PM

It's interesting to read how people either provide "stop-gap" solutions, or argue that you should just switch off notifications and log-in more often. When you are a member of countless sites -- both business and personal -- you just don't have time to log in to each of them to find out that nothing's happened. That's what notifications are all about.

I'm totally on seanbonner's side here. A site offering inter-member private messaging should make that process as convenient as possible for its members, which includes emailing the content of those messages to them (should they have email notification switched on, of course).
Naturally, to send a reply the user should have to log-in to the site (e.g. a link in the notification that reads "Click here to reply"), and this gets the site the page views that they want while providing convenience for the user.
From my own experience, when I get to this point, the next step I usually take after sending the reply is to check out what else is going on with the site (which is what's so great about Facebook's "Mini-Feed")