We noticed a new type of notification this morning, one that comes from Facebook and informs you that a certain post on a page on which you’re an admin is “performing better than 90% of other posts on the Page.” It then suggests that you “advertise it to get even better results.”

Various WebProNews writers received this same notification this morning (we’re all admins on the WPN Facebook page). Clicking on the notification takes us to the “Advertise on Facebook” page and gets us started on setting up a promoted post with said article.

Here’s what it looks like in the notifications:

I’ve reached out to Facebook for comment on the test, and will update this article accordingly.

UPDATE: Facebook has confirmed with me that this is a test that they’re running.

This isn’t the first attempt that Facebook has made in recent memory to get page owners to promote more of their posts. Last month, Facebook made a few subtle changes to Pages, including the addition of a new analytics box inside the admin panel. Facebook also softened the language of page promotion, changing the “promote” post button to one that says “boost” post.

One user of the iOS app tells WebProNews the app keeps alerting them to previously sent, old messages. This person says that from about ten messages a friend sent today, they’ve gotten about 40 alerts.

The problems may not be exclusive to the Messenger app or the iOS version. People are also complaining a lot about notification issues on Twitter:

“Name, tell friends what’s on your mind. Post an update,” reads the new iOS notification.

Here’s a screenshot of the new push notification, via Bijan Sabet:

Facebook confirmed to Mashable that the new push notification is part of a “small test” that they are currently running. If just looking at this annoys the hell out of you, find solace in the fact that Facebook tests tons and tons of features all the time, and only a small percentage of them ever come to fruition.

This week’s video tackles not only notification design, but the design process behind Google Now:

Join Nick Butcher, Adam Koch and Roman Nurik as they discuss various elements of Android Design. This week, Alex Faaborg from the Android UX team at Google stops by to talk about the when and the why of notifications and walks through a design process case study for Google Now.

Update 2: A StumbleUpon spokesperson tells WebProNews, “We can confirm that there is third party who is sending out spam emails that look and feel like StumbleUpon emails. We encourage all who receive them to be careful, and not to click on any links in the email. We are currently investigating it.”

The company also confirms to us that they did indeed send emails about these changes, so that part of it is legit.

StumbleUpon appears to be making a move a number of its social media peers have made in recent months, by seeking further engagement from its members via email.

The company has been sending emails to users discussing their email notification settings, and has made some changes with regards to the kinds of emails people get from StumbleUpon.

“This is a quick note to let you know about some changes we’ve made to the email settings in your StumbleUpon account,” the email says. “We’ve created a bunch of new notification options that allow you to have more control over what types of emails you’ll receive from us. These new notification options are not compatible with the old settings, so your settings have been reset. We apologize for any inconvenience, and want to make sure we only send you the emails you want to receive.”

To be perfectly honest, it’s been a long time since I’ve looked at my email settings on StumbleUpon, and since the company didn’t go into specifics, I can’t say exactly what all has changed, but here’s what the options look like now:

One thing that must be relatively new is the addition of the “Tell me when a Stumbler follows my List” option, as the Lists feature itself was only released several months ago.

Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ (especially Twitter) have all added various types emails for users within the last year or so. It’s a good move in terms of keeping users coming back, and keeping the service fresh in their minds. Of course, that is dependent on users checking those boxes above.

Related:

Twitter Wants You to Email Tweets to Your Non-Twitter-Using Friends

You Can Now Receive Twitter’s “Best-Of” Emails Daily, If That’s Something You’re Into

Twitter Finds Another Reason To Send Users Email

Google+ Starts Relying More On Email For Engagement

Is Email The Future Of Social Media?

It looks like something went wrong in Facebook land and the company re-subscribed users to groups from long ago. It happened to me – I now belong to a few dozen old groups that I hadn’t thought about in years. Apparently, some users have even reported that they’ve been added to as many as 250 groups.

Facebook is aware of the issue, and is looking into it:

“Some users appear to have been re-added to groups that they have left in the past. We are investigating,” said Facebook in a statement.

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Richard Dawson
@dawsonsweek

Why is Facebook showing me all the old groups I joined when I was 19 and still had hopes and dreams?

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4 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

Maybe that’s one positive way to look at it. How else would you have remembered that you once belonged to the “10:00 am Tequila Bongers” group or the “Young Republicans Club.” Yikes.

Facebook is working on the problem, and I’m sure they’ll have a fix soon. Until then, you may want to go in and unsubscribe from any offending groups on your own. Or, just put up with the flurry of unwanted notifications.

[via The Next Web]

Facebook thinks that the visual cue of that little red number at the top left corner may not be enough, so they’re testing a new feature that would guarantee you never miss another notification.

VentureBeat confirms that Facebook is pushing new notification sounds to a small set of users.

Here’s what they sound like in action:

If you truly hate the idea of Facebook playing a sound every time you get a notification, think about it this way: it’s more likely that they will scrap it as opposed to roll it out worldwide. Facebook performs small tests with new features all the time, and only a small percentage ever come to fruition. In the last few months, we’ve told you about tests for notifications for declined invites, thumbnails for photo-related notifications, and reminder notifications that pop up an hour before a scheduled event. So far none of these have seen primetime play. As it stands, sound notifications are just a small test.

Plus, if they do roll out to all users, you’ll be able to turn them off in your notification settings with a single click.

One Apple fan has taken inspiration from Android and Windows Phone 8 and created a concept video for how widgets could work on an iPhone. YouTube user maxrudberg, who also creates themes for Apple operating systems, created the video to show “how the iOS home screen could become more.” From his video description:

In this concept, an app icon can be resized from 1×1 to 2×2 or 4×2, similarly to how you would on Windows Phone 8. The increased size can house widget like functionality and provide easy access to core features of that particular app. For example, you could expand the Settings icon into a widget with a brightness slider, and quick toggles for WiFi, Bluetooth, Personal Hotspot and Do Not Disturb.

The newfound space could also be used to give a miniaturized window into the app, showing content already on the home screen. This could be useful for Phone, Messages or Mail. Instead of a glaring red badge, you’d be able to see the messages or calls directly on the home screen.

To launch the app, you can press the shrunken app icon in the lower left.

The expanded icons can be moved around like regular icons and placed in the manner you like. But for obvious reasons, you cannot place an expanded icon in the dock; it would just slide back onto the home screen.

One could imagine that this functionality would also be available to developers, who could include it for their apps.

This would rather nicely complement the existing feature set of iOS and make the home screen more engaging.

The iOS homescreen certainly could use some redecorating. Though the brand recognition of the iOS homescreen is something Apple is still enjoying, looking the same as it did in 2007 might not be the best strategy when potential customers see the functionality widgets bring to other mobile OS’. Just this week a new survey showed that iPhone loyalty is on the decline.

If you’re not familiar with the new Notifications API, it’s essentially a method in which developers can send messages directly to players. Instead of having to wait for a player to boot up their game or see an email, the developer can send messages to the player via their notification feed on Facebook proper.

Facebook reports that developers sending “high quality notifications” to active users are seeing click through rates of 25 percent or higher. They point out that this is significantly higher than traditional direct response channels like email. One developer in particular, KIXEYE, sees a 30 percent click through rate with War Commander.

As said before, the key to getting such a high click through rate is to craft high quality notifications. As such, Facebook will now be implementing two new quality control measures for notifications on November 9:

For more information on these and other quality control measures, check out the documentation.

Since the introduction of the Notifications API, Facebook has also featured Insights into how well said notifications were doing. Now you can separate notifications into groups and track each one with a custom ref_param. This will help you evaluate the performance of separate notifications so you can improve user response.

The Notifications API is still in beta, but it looks like its coming along very well. Combined with the Mobile App Install Ads, developers now have more tools than ever to drive users to their apps.

To receive the notification, you must have joined the event via positive RSVP. That means you won’t receive notifications for every single event that you’ve just been invited to. The notification will appear in your inbox alongside all of your other notifications (likes, tags, photos, etc.) and will tell you that you have an “event in __ minutes” and display which event in bold.

Here’s what Facebook had to say about the test:

This is a feature we’ve been testing for a couple months with a small percentage of users. How it works is that people who RSVP “Join” to an event will receive a push notification and a jewel notification an hour before the event begins.

There’s no word on how close Facebook is to rolling this out to all users – Facebook performs dozens and dozens of tests every month and not all of them come to fruition. This little feature would be nice though, as notifications can be pushed to your mobile devices. If you’re out and about, an hour may give you just enough time to catch that event that you may have forgotten about.

Speaking of notifications, you’re probably going to start seeing more and more of them soon. In August, Facebook announced the launch of the Notifications API beta, which allow developers to “send short, custom messages to [their] existing users through the Facebook notifications jewel.” Developers are strictly limited to non-spammy non-obscene notifications, and users will be able to opt out of notifications with a simple click of the “x” inside the notification itself.

[via The Next Web]