It seems that there’s a mismatch between how I expect G+ album notifications to work, and how they actually work….

It seems that there’s a mismatch between how I expect G+ album notifications to work, and how they actually work.  What I’m doing is uploading an album from Picasa, and sharing it with two non-public circles.

Expectation:  The album is visible to all of the people in both circles, and will show up in a post from me in their stream.

What’s happening:  Everything I expect, but in addition some (possibly all) of the people in both circles are getting Notifications.

I’d like to know what I’m doing to trigger the notifications.  This feels like a bug, but no matter what it’s causing the worst kind of social networking fail: Oversharing.  The last thing I want is to alienate friends, and while I believe that my daughter’s pictures are of Great Importance, I don’t think everyone I know should have their phone chirp every time I upload one.

12 thoughts on “It seems that there’s a mismatch between how I expect G+ album notifications to work, and how they actually work….

  1. It’s not just you. It looks like all albums shared with non-public circles generate a notification, even if the circles are enormous. Most likely a bug, I reckon, or a poorly thought out feature.

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  2. yeah- i had that happening to me all the time. some people said they locked me because it notified them for each picture (I think)

    so now i share public or i have to create the post in picassa, upload it and not share it to circles, comes to G+ and then share that album with the circles I want. OR i just create the post in G+

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  3. Mike Jurney I’m glad you noticed this or someone told you – I haven’t been super enthused about all the email notifications, but I wasn’t going to complain either; I didn’t want to complain about your delight at your child 🙂

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  4. If you find out why this is happening, or whether it’s working as intended or not let us know. Would be good for all of us to know who gets emailed/notified when posting things to circles.

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  5. Un-check the “Notify these people when photos are uploaded to this album.” checkbox in the picasaweb album before sharing to circles. Otherwise everyone in the circles gets notifications.

    Add to the stupid: there’s no way to toggle a default for that checkbox.

    [edit: clarify that the checkbox is in the picasaweb album, in case that’s not painfully obvious, which it’s not.]

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  6. All G+ albums are Picasa albums under-the-hood. This is a strange relic from that integration. I had found a help article about this at one point but I couldn’t find it last night.

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  7. David Knowles I wish you would stop toying with my emotions 😛

    I’ll check things out the next time I have a batch of pictures to upload, but what you’re describing sounds pretty plausible.  I’ll report back.

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