“Jimmy posted a drunk picture of you on Facebook”
“Jane responded to your inane comment about the election on Twitter”
“Random Insurance Salesmen would like to connect on LinkedIn”
“Something actually happened on Google+. Whoa!”
These notifications might be important to you, but do you need them in your email inbox? Probably not. Do yourself a favor – find all of the notification settings for all of your social networks in one place, then turn them off. NotifyMeNot is a simple webpage you can use to fight the flood of useless social emails filling your inbox so you can instead use email to read messages from other humans.
Modern life basically depends on email, and man: can it ever get overwhelming. It seems like every social network, website and business views email as a simple way to get your attention, and all of them crave it desperately. The result is newsletters from stores you shop at and notifications from social networks you barely use.
From the perspective of Facebook, Twitter and similar companies this makes sense. Email is something you check every day, so sending you email is a quick way to get your attention. But no one is questioning whether these emails are valuable to Facebook and Twitter. What is worth questioning is whether these emails are valuable to you. If you feel overwhelmed by email it’s probably a good idea to turn these notifications off, and NotifyMeNot will show you how.
Using Notifiy Me Not
To get started simply head to NotifyMeNot. You’ll see a list of links:
Each of these buttons takes you to the notifications settings page. For example, here’s the notifications page for Google+:
If you’re like most people you probably didn’t realize these annoying emails were optional. Take your time and turn off the things you don’t need; it’s up to you. Confused about what everything means? NotifyMeNo also offers complete breakdowns of what all the settings mean:
Of course, Google+ notifications aren’t a huge problem because nothing happens on that site. Ever. But don’t worry: the site contains links and instructions for email evildoers Facebook and Twitter as well.
The site currently offers links and instructions for:
- Google+
- OK Cupid
- YouTube
- Foursquare
- MeetUp
- Amazon
- Match
Want to know about another service? You can leave a message requesting it, helping make everyone’s inbox less cluttered.
Other Email Reducing Sites
Need more help managing your inbox? We’ve written a few articles about services for just that; here are some examples.
- Mass unsubscribe from nuisance emails and newsletters using Unsubscribr
- UnrollMe unsubscribes your unwanted mailing lists
- UnsubscribeDeals turns off emails from every daily deal service
- Gmail’s Priority Inbox solves the bacn problem
Conclusion
It’s one of the most important parts of a healthy information diet: scheduling time to interact with certain content instead of constantly consuming. NotifyMeNot can help by making the time you spend checking your email about checking email, instead of being about checking your email and every other social media service you use.
What notifications did you turn off? Let me know in the comments below, along with any other email-reducing ideas you might have.
Image Credit: Stack of envelopes via Shutterstock.
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Hide 9 Comments
I think you can actually disable all the annoying notifications in the Facebook Settings
You can: this site just gives you a quick way to find those settings. Facebook’s settings are a maze, so direct links are appreciated.
I usually make filter in my email to make my inbox stay organized and clean.
It’s a great strategy.
Thanks!I hate to see that countless number on my inbox.When i open it is all from facebook.
Use a special address to act as your social notifications wastebasket. Don’t let them mixed up with emails you actually care about.
Or if you’re going for the extreme, delete your unused account. If you still get notification for an account you’ve abandoned, why not purge it altogether?
Twitter is one of the worst offenders. You lock down your settings and a few weeks later they come up with a new type of notification and they conveniently (for them) assume you want to get those new notifications in your inbox even though you unchecked all others.
Quote annoying, I agree. Fix it, Twitter!
I completely agree with Tito and Justin. I use Hootsuite to do my tweeting and the only time I ever log into the Twitter site is to update my email notification settings when Twitter has added a new type of notification.