Friendster Blog Notifications: Useful or Annoying? (And How to Turn Them Off)
In the last few weeks, I’ve received two kinds of feedback about my blog and the fact that friendster sends email notifications every time I make a post. The majority of people have said it’s a nice reminder to go look at the blog and know that there will be something new to read. On the other hand, a small but passionate minority has been greatly irritated by the excess of email that this generates. Before I get started on the details though, I want to thank each and every one of you that has taken the time to read what I’ve been writing - you’re my friends, I love you, and it means a lot to me that you care about what I have to say. That said, let’s get into the nitty and the gritty:
First of all, if you want to opt out, it’s easy - you can turn off the receiving of "friend updates" (more about them here: http://friendster.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/friendster.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=191) in your "Account Settings." You’ll still get friendster message alerts, you just won’t get things like birthdays, blog updates, etc.
Next, I must say it’s been interesting having a blog on friendster - in the last few weeks, many friends I’ve talked to at gatherings and parties have mentioned they’ve been reading my blog, presumably because they got the updates via email. This is great - it makes me feel like it’s worth posting about interesting things, since people - in fact, people I care about - will actually come and read about it occasionally. Also, I think the typical user out there is not (yet) using an RSS reader, so she/he has no other way to know when things have changed.
Regardless, I’m in the process of finding a longer-term hosting solution, though since I’ll probably going to be self-hosting, this may take a while. Friendster is at best an "amateur" blog and has a variety of annoying characteristics, like only being able to show the last ten entries, only allowing comments from friendster members, etc. However, they use typepad, which is a really nice interface, and it’s pretty darn easy to use. And those email notifications - while annoying - do seem to be effective :) Even once I find a more permanent hosting solution, I’ll probably post occasional "digest" entries on my friendster blog, just to broadcast out to all you friendsters that there’s new stuff to read!
I’d love to get your feedback on this; please leave me comments here or just send me an email/message.
