If you’re the type that waits with bated breath as your Facebook homepage loads in hopes that you’ll be greeted with some new notifications but sadly are met with a dearth of notices, Dr. Benjamin Grosser has got the cure for your social network malady.

Actually, he’s not really a doctor (as far as I know). He’s just an astute software developer with a mind for how we interact with software and the emotional effect it has on us.

Grosser has developed a plug-in for Facebook called Reload The Love!, a new application that will automatically inflate the amount of notifications you see when you log in to your Facebook account. Tired of seeing zero notifications? Reload The Love! will make sure you see plenty the next time you reload the page or log in. If you should receive any real notifications after Reload The Love! has inflated them, the count will automatically revert to the actual values. If you start feeling the tug of loneliness due to no new notifications after that, you can re-inflate them anytime by reloading the page to Reload The Love!

The project is equal parts social psychology experiment and software development ingenuity as it cleverly explores the value social networks have on a person’s self-esteem and how something as seemingly minuscule as red word bubble notifications can impact a person’s mood.

“Reload The Love! is first and foremost an art project for me,” Grosser told WebProNews, “so I do consider it within that context. As such, one of its purposes is to get people thinking about how Facebook’s notification icons function in their daily lives. How many times do you check those icons, hoping to find a new friend or message? How do those icons make you feel?”

The marketing value of such information, which Facebook is undoubtedly tracking, isn’t lost on Grosser, either, who has worked on other software systems for Facebook and Google. “It’s important to remember that Facebook’s value as a company is in the breadth of its data,” he said. “The source of that data is unwaged free labor contributed by us, their users. How do those icons prod us to keep generating more of that free data? As you mentioned, are we feeling happier when we see everyone else’s activities, or does it make us sad when we inevitably compare them to our own?”

Grosser’s Reload The Love! application turns the value of those notifications on its ear as it “nullifies those icons by turning them into a perpetual positive indicator.” So far, the response has been well received although, although since the application is very new it’s only been installed 366 times (wink, wink, hint). “When I show it or talk about it with people I get a variety of reactions,” Grosser said. “The first is humor – many people find it quite funny. But others find it sad and talk about their own emotional connection and/or reliance on those icons.”

And there’s the rub: people experiencing emotional distress over lack of attention and involvement on Facebook. Has social networking really moved beyond a fun pastime distraction to being a legitimate utility in our everyday lives? That’s one of the complexities that Reload The Love! exposes to ourselves – but not to Grosser. Yes, rest assured, he has zero ways of tracking any of your information through the use of this application and he was delightfully up-front in stating he wouldn’t want to even if that was a possibility. “I wouldn’t want to invade anyone’s privacy with that,” he said. “The source code is freely viewable so that users can verify for themselves that nothing nefarious is going on.”

Take that, Facebook.

But back to the existential question that Reload The Love! points at us: are we really that reliant on being noticed on Facebook? Maybe. Grosser admits that such questions are what drive his interest in software. “I am obsessed with how software functions to force us into certain types of behaviors or to see the world in certain ways.” He adds, “Software is a designed object, and even though we can’t hold it in our hands or pack it in a box, it has a profound effect on our daily life. These are the interests that led me to create Reload The Love!”

Reload The Love! isn’t a Facebook app that works within the Facebook UI itself but rather must be installed as a plug-in on Firefox, Chrome, and Safari browsers (don’t worry, it’s a piece of cake to install). You will need to get an extension for Firefox (Greasemonkey) and Safari (Ninjakit) but Chrome runs the app on a native browser extension. Installation is very user-friendly and you can find instructions on how to integrate Reload The Love! on your Facebook account here. If you’re so inclined to give Reload The Love! a try, let us know what you think in the comment section below.

"You can now use the rules and routing mechanisms of your email inbox to control how you communicate with applications," says Faecbook’s Arun Vijayvergiya. "This email option is one of a number of upcoming changes we announced in October to give you a faster and more connected experience when interacting with external applications on Facebook. You will soon start to see dialog boxes on application pages from external developers asking you if you would like to receive communication about their applications through your primary email address."

If you do sign up to receive emails from any application, you can also unsubscribe, as each email will have an "unsubscribe" link. However, if you unsubscribe, and the application doesn’t comply with your request Facebook suggests you report it to the FTC. That said, they do offer the option to report applications for violating guidelines on the application pages themselves. It is unclear if this will be effective for general email spamming.

"Some applications may require an email address in order to use their service, in the same way that websites might when you sign up for them," says Vijayvergiya. "In all cases, you will have the option to click the ‘change’ link in the dialog box and share an anonymous version of your email address, called a proxied email address. You can always choose to stop using an application or use a different application instead if you don’t want to receive emails from a particular application."

Facebook says developers will be held to the "highest" guidelines to help prevent spam, misleading info, and malicious intent, but the company still encourages the use of caution when communicating with apps.

As for future updates, Facebook will also soon start showing the option to receive notifications in new places. There will be a feature called "Counters" that will appear next to bookmarked apps on the user’s home page. There will also be new apps and games dashboards where users will be able to get app updates. Users will also soon no longer receive updates from apps in the notifications channel on Facebook.

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