Who noticed Google’s new ‘Google Internal Comms Machine’ announcement last week? No, we’re not talking about Wave this is far more fun. Google announced news of its Desktop Notifcations API.
Now for many many years I managed something ultimately very similar, (albeit with video) which needed very strong governance to work. Problem was these notifications could be bloody annoying. Net result was that around 20% of users switched them off (aka sabotaging their desktop image).
Nonetheless, around 50% saw the notifications we sent and about 35-40% watched the videos. This left a very grey areas of those not seeing the notifications. What was happening?
The word on the ground was system failure – or ‘sabotage’, the messages weren’t getting through. In reality thought they were. The truth was that people weren’t interested enough to watch the exec videos but were too wise or embarrassed to say so.
Which takes me back to Google. If their Desktop Notification isn’t going to go the way of Microsoft’s very helpful Mr Paperclip it will need very strong management from whoever uses it to send the notifications.
Who/How will that be managed? Have Google even thought about this? One wonders and waits…