Notification Overload

My email inbox has reached notification overload.

Let me give you an example. I searched my gmail for from:twitter, and got so many results, that when gmail listed the number of pages, it just said “many.” I would get many twitter emails a day, despite trying each time to unsubscribe. The key factor: I clicked “unsubscribe from these emails” and I didn’t go to twitter and unsubscribe from all emails for all of my twitter accounts. Twitter definitely knows I don’t want their emails, because the unsubscribe link leads me to this picture:

There are 13 different types of notification emails I have to unsubscribe to for each twitter account. With a handful of twitter accounts, this is kind of ridiculous how many silly updates I am getting.

Here are some things twitter wanted to tell me:

• I might know these random people
• This is what is happening on twitter
• Some friends have some tweets for me
• I’m missing some stuff in the US
• Barack Obama retweeted a link from Jon Carson

Twitter is not the only culprit, just the most salient. Each site that I sign up for now seems to sign me up for 15 different types of notification emails. The worst is following. Every site wants to send you new follower emails.

I think I’ve spent hours in the last week trying to unsubscribe from all of these email notifications that I get. However, not every site has automatic one-click-to-unsubscribe, so you are often stuck navigating a trick-form which actually tries to get you to stay subscribed by having to confusingly check or uncheck the types of emails you want from this site.

Even worse, I get notifications that I am now unsubscribed. I thought I just unsubscribed… now you have to tell me about it?!? (meant to be read as a joke, internet people… don’t read it in an angry voice.)

Indiegogo Newsletter: You are now unsubscribed

Audioboo List: You are now unsubscribed

UserTesting.com newsletters: You are now unsubscribed

To be honest, I didn’t know I was ever subscribed to these newsletters. I guess that is just how it works on the internet.

Digitals from Chris Crutchfield on Vimeo.

This video is a good example of the current notification overload.

I realize I could just create filters on my email… but I think the main gripe is on the default settings. I just looked at Quora and they have 48 email notification types to let me know about. Forty eight. Really. What. I remember trying to unsubscribe many, many times to quora emails… only to realize I was on the doomed path of unsubscribing to certain notification types, and not all emails. And after all of this… I did want quora emails. I just wanted to know when someone answered my question. But, kind of hilariously, I did not get that type of email, and got many other types I didn’t want.

Do you have notification overload? What do you do about it? Reply in the comments.