Clawing for Attention

I understand the need for every app, especially the news ones, to claw for attention. I think the worst offenders do so and have sponsored/suggested ads peppered in through their content.

The Yahoo! Newsroom app is the worst of all the ones I have. Once I open it, I think I get 20-25 notifications within two or three days of news it believes I want to look at. Some of it is just the Yahoo! content, a good deal being videos. I’ve never been a fan of video news. Television news is fine, but video news in general has been iffy for me. Newsy has been an exception, though I haven’t quite given them as much attention as I had in the past.

Another offender is LinkedIn. They don’t do notifications quite as often, but they like to randomly have their badge light up just so anal-retentive people like me who want it gone can open the app. That then starts the cycle, because once one opens the app, more notifications come in. Pinterest too.

But it’s all free, so I really shouldn’t complain, right? Or turn off the notifications and badges? But then I might miss something.