I’ve noticed something in the last few weeks that might drive me crazy. I’m sure you noticed it too. There are people talking about things and they’re ready to join your community. Just click on this notification to learn more!

Paying Attention

Earlier this year I talked about how everything seems to be geared to disrupt our attention. At that time, I thought it would get better by just ignoring the notifications and removing them from my devices to reduce it to the minimum. I think the providers read my post because they found even more ways to get to me. I think they have it out for me.

Attention is a resource like money or oil or the amount of hydrogen atoms in the sun. It has a finite limit and we only have so much to work with. Every disruption causes us to switch contexts and try to manage it. As I mentioned, I went about removing as much of that distraction as I could. Because having my focus be on a task and not on a cute popup banner is important for work and the other things that I do.

Thankfully, the social media apps found a way to disabuse me of that notion. I noticed it a few months ago but it has grown to epic proportions now. I’m sure there’s a term for it but I’m going to call it engagement fishing. It’s simple. I’m going to send you a notification that has some bare context or some potential for something and make you click on it to go to my app. Remember those clickbait headlines of yore? Imagine them in a notification for your apps.

LinkedIn has recently started showing me notifications for “XXX and YY others are likely to follow you soon. Invite them this week.” Snapchat recently turned on some trending hashtag notification that I was getting twice a day. It reminded me of the infamous Dickbar incident over 15 years ago. Why do I need to know what’s trending when I use Snapchat to talk to like 3 people?

Before the Fall

If I were a normal person I would think that these apps are just trying out new features to engage their audience. Annoying but predictable. Next month will probably have some new partnership designed to draw in F1 fans or the latest K-Pop sensations. But the cynic in me wonders if the real problem is falling engagement.

The platforms are constantly trying to figure out how to get you into the app and then lock you there. Timelines and algorithms and force feeding you content until you look up and realize it’s been an hour since you checked in on that boiling water on the stove. The latest success is all thanks to short form video. I swear I can walk through my house and hear TikTok videos and Instagram Reels and Facebook videos playing alongside Youtube Shorts and whatever else is giving everyone that quick hit of dopamine.

The ubiquity of these particular platforms is part of the reason why I think other ones are pushing this engagement fishing so hard. They know that once you slip into the app you’re not coming out for a while. LinkedIn isn’t TikTok or Instagram. At best it’s becoming Work Facebook (and that’s not a good thing). Short form video about how pulling the sword from the stone taught me a lot about B2B marketing may be cute and end up on the LinkedIn Lunatics subreddit but it doesn’t make me want to engage with anything on the platform. So LinkedIn starts fishing. They give me notifications of comments on posts I don’t follow. They tell me I just need to click here to invite a bunch of people to follow my pages. And don’t get me started on turning your article posts into a newsletter every time one of them goes up.

The platforms are worried they are losing engagement. They probably have numbers to prove it. People spending less time logged in and interacting with things. Think about all the crazy things you have to do now to get something to pop up on LinkedIn. Certain key words, not putting the link to the post in the body but in the first comment. Tagging tons of people to force engagement. It’s all designed to get more interaction and draw people out of the event horizon of short form video in Apps That Aren’t Ours.

All of it sends me rushing to figure out which setting I have to disable to keep it from happening to me. Instead of luring me back in to interact with people you’re making me turn even more off to prevent these popups. Instead of giving me options to interact via opt-in you are forcing me to opt out of things I never wanted in the first place and I can promise you I’m going to disable more than just one check box on my way through. If you, as a platform owner, think the way to drive engagement is by tricks and constantly putting your app in my face I can and will do everything possible to get your app out of my face, even if it’s something I have to use on a regular basis.

Tom’s Take

I don’t ask a lot from my social platforms. Give me a timeline with people I follow and chronological posting. Don’t feed me random things I don’t care about based on an algorithm I don’t understand. Stop making me click on notifications that are designed to lure me into your app to show me something I don’t want to see because you needed me to log some activity like a hamster in a wheel. That ache you have to get my attention is going to lead to me deleting your app and writing a post like this one to encourage people to go back to the days of sending mail the old fashioned way.