May 25, 2011

New Twitter email notifications – good news or bad news?

Tweet deck - Twitter management toolIf this morning like me, you woke to a stream of email notifications from Twitter advising you that you have been mentioned and retweeted by various people, you may want to know why.

Well, it seems that Twitter have changed their settings and, as appears to be the form on social media, decided that everyone should have all the email notification boxes ticked as the default.

My email inbox has recently been transformed through using Leo Babauta’s excellent tips on how to keep your inbox clear. So I was somewhat peeved when it got clogged with lots of Twitter notifications. Now don’t get me wrong, being advised who follows me and when I get a direct message is essential to help me manage my Twitter account. However I do not necessarily want to be told when someone retweets or mentions me. I can clearly see that in the relevant columns on Tweet Deck. (See image above)

If you don’t want all these emails, you can easily change your settings on Twitter by:

1. Signing in to your Twitter account on your browser,

2. Clicking the drop down arrow next to your name on the top right corner

3. Clicking on ‘Settings’

4. Clicking on the ‘Notifications’ tab

5. Choosing which notifications you wish to receive by email by clicking the tick on or off

So overall I think it is good news as it gives you options that could be useful depending on how you use Twitter and whether you are using another app to manage your stream. For new people who are only using Twitter it will make it easier to pick up what is going on before they decide to move to a more friendly user interface such as Tweet Deck or Hoot Suite.

What Twitter management platform do you use and what do you like about it?

Update: Apparently this is being rolled out gradually to all Twitter users so it might not be happening to you yet. You will soon find out when the emails start hitting your inbox.

By Andy Britnell Social Media, Twitter 16 Comments Tags: , , , , ,