This is pretty interesting. I remember some time ago Vox Media (who make The Verge and Polygon along with Vox itself) declared that they were going web-only:
It doesn't seem to have hurt them - but push notifications are probably the #1 feature that differentiates between webapps and native apps in a context like this. I wonder if they'll take advantage.
(as with all things mobile web, this comes with the huge caveat that Apple have no intention of doing this (despite having similar functionality on desktop), and want to force everyone to use native apps, so it's unlikely to be a complete solution any time soon)
The whole push notification issue needs to be seen in context though even though most people consider it in a rather myopic and self-centered manner. Push notifications, in and of themselves are not all that bad of a thing; but push notifications sent by all the apps and all the services without any sort of coordination is bad for all of the apps because people tune them out or turn them off except for the most important ones like email, messages, calls.
I think the OS that can solve the mental load question regarding notifications will make significant headway. I'm not sure what the answer totally looks like, but it seems to be it really needs to be an OS managed service. I would love to see it even utilize behavioral patterns, but I think there is still much work to be done for that to be useful, but I think Apple and Microsoft could be heading that way.
A system whereby apps/sites post metadata about the items awaiting a user rather than specific notifications is an interesting idea. But I wouldn't want to be the one to formalise that system and try to encompass every interaction users have with their data online.
It's definitely complicated, which is probably why no one has wanted to address it. People in tech nowadays, because money is just sloshing around and there are plenty of low hanging fruit to pluck, are largely not interested in solving difficult problems. I don't blame them, it's just an effect of the current system.
I will happily welcome it even if just to break down those gigantic walled gardens. But I can also think of a lot of dashboards I've built for clients where they really would have appreciated push notifications.
Honestly the only notifications I care about are email, text messages and phone calls. The rest can all go to hell. Again, this is just my personal taste.
I think that is fine. You can disable notifications and push completely, and you can not accept the prompt if you don't want to go that far. We are trying to be careful and make this opt-in only and clear to the user about the value that they can get from it (if they choose it)
http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/2/6096609/welcome-to-verge-2-...
It doesn't seem to have hurt them - but push notifications are probably the #1 feature that differentiates between webapps and native apps in a context like this. I wonder if they'll take advantage.
(as with all things mobile web, this comes with the huge caveat that Apple have no intention of doing this (despite having similar functionality on desktop), and want to force everyone to use native apps, so it's unlikely to be a complete solution any time soon)