SMS alerts

Oh no I know it's not difficult, in fact it's done automatically for iPhones. However, email requires downloading which requires data, and I get too many emails from too many sources for that to be of any use to me. Additionally, myself as I'm sure most have push turned off or at least silenced for emails due to the bulk of spam or subs that one receives. My emails only download every 30 minutes automatically, and sometimes I have to enter the app to manually initiate an inbox check.

The point of SMS notifications is a higher level of awareness for subbed threads and tags/quotes, instant feedback without being buried in the bulk of the usual useless emails.

 

Theoretically getting mass users numbers may be worthwhile for marketing purposes, being able to tweet "sythes new cdt event is now live" or other big updates to thousands of phones and having them instantly see it(people check their phones constantly), may end up being quite lucrative long-term.

Perhaps if you do add this, make people check a box to consent to occasionally having news/updates and stuff texted to them like forums do when u signup for them then when people want to stop receive texts/notifications they can simply uncheck the box or whatever that they clicked to signup.

Food for thought, that's quite a lot of potential marketing, if that outweighs the cost it might be worthwhile looking into.

Particularly for old forum members who activate it then don't get on a lot- you'd essentially have a direct link to them to give them incentive to return to the forum.

 

A variant of this would be native browser notifications (Notifications API, Push API). These are opt-in, and browser support varies (see here). Devices have mixed behaviour (it may not be possible to mimic native push notifications using Web Push API - especially on iOS, as Apple has their own notifications service that requires an Apple Developer API Key).

Edit: confirming ^, iOS supports Push API on Chrome/FF but not Safari. To use notifications from a web-app to Safari on iOS you need to register through APNS.

 

Implement selective alert preferences as you do with in-browser notifications.

 

If it's easy then I guess why not? Good to have another option to get notifications.

 

Suggestion Section Clean-Up