14 Days | A little Push
the nuances of push notifications in Rate Game
Love/Hate
Is how I would best describe my feelings for, and general stance on, mobile push notifications. They either delight me or annoy me, there’s no in between. A push notification from Google’s Gmail App, alerting me that someone has just subscribed to the Ratelist, brings me great joy. On the other hand, when Strava reminds me that it’s been over a month since I’ve gone on an outdoor run, I get bit frustrated. Of course I haven’t Strava, it’s been miserable in NYC for the past month. Today was the first runnable weather day of 2024 on the East Coast and I did’t go. So thanks for that.
In today’s world, every mobile app has the ability to send you these push notifications, and every mobile app will do so relentlessly, until you make them stop. Since the time I started writing this post 4 minutes ago, I’ve received a total of 5 push notifications from 5 different apps:
3 push notifications from The Score/ESPN/Yahoo Sports alerting me that the Knicks just beat the Cavs. Nice win. Hope Brunson is ok!
1 passive aggressive push notification from Strava about my lack of outdoor physical activity. I’ve been doing my part indoors.
1 push notification from Uber Eats, who seems to be be piggy backing off of Strava, offering up six free months of free delivery on their Uber One service by enticing me with some fast food emojis. Right now. The nerve.
In technical terms, push notifications are sent from a server to the push notification service of the platform (e.g., Apple's APNS for iOS devices or Google's FCM for Android devices), which then delivers the notification to the intended device. On the web, push notifications are delivered through browsers using service workers and the Push API.
Banner Blindness
Originally referred to web users' tendency to ignore banner ads on websites, as they become accustomed to their placements in certain areas of a website. Google is a prime example of this. Next time you run a search, see if you can catch yourself scrolling past the first three or four blue links until you reach the ones that aren’t ads.
If I was truly in need of new running sneaks, (which I’m not, if you’re reading this, Strava) I’d be half way down the page before finding the content that I deem relevant to my needs.
The same is true of push notifications. In the course of a single day, I would venture to assume that I receive over 100 push notifications across all the apps on my iPhone. Of those 100, I maybe action on 4 or 5 of them. I’m blind as a bat.
Two
That is amount of times a Rate Game user will be sent push notifications during the course of a single game. Once when the Game starts, and once again, when window to Rate the Game (Rating Window) has closed. This is both in an attempt to avoid the blindness described above, and to prevent potential abuse. If you want to watch a specific Game, we’ll remind you when it starts. If you want to see what the Game’s final Rating was, we’ll let you know once it’s under lock & key in the Vault. What happens between those two moments in time, is up to you. If you watched it, you’ll know when the Game has ended, and can Rate it within the allotted Window. If you didn’t, catch the next one. No need to pad your stats, or skew the Overall Rating for a Game you didn’t experience, with all the other Sports Fans who took the time, and did. In the wonderful World of Sports, and the Games played within, there’s always another one, waiting for you.
Until Tomorrow!
14 days!!!