Mobile Push Notification Segmentation for Bandwidth Reduction
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current social-networking systems face inefficiencies in pushing notifications to mobile devices, particularly when dealing with stateful objects, as they often require transmitting all information related to an object, which can be resource-intensive and wasteful, especially when only incremental changes have occurred.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a method where the social-networking system pushes a first notification with comprehensive information about a stateful object and subsequent notifications only include incremental state changes, allowing the mobile client to update the display using locally cached content and new information.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If the social-networking system pushes all information related to a stateful object in each notification, then the user receives complete and up-to-date information, but the bandwidth consumption and resource usage increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The notification is segmented into two parts: an initial comprehensive notification containing all information about the stateful object, and subsequent incremental notifications containing only the state changes. This segmentation allows the system to transmit complete information initially while only transmitting necessary changes thereafter, reducing overall bandwidth consumption.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary action by pushing the complete information about the stateful object in the first notification before any state changes occur. This ensures the mobile client has all necessary information initially, and subsequent notifications only need to transmit changes, improving efficiency.
2Loss of information
If the social-networking system transmits all information in each notification, then the user interface can display complete information, but the push channel becomes overwhelmed with redundant data
Solution Approach 1:
The notification stream is segmented into an initial full notification and subsequent incremental updates. The mobile client processes the complete object information once, then only processes state changes in later notifications, reducing the load on the push channel and avoiding redundancy.
Solution Approach 2:
The system pushes complete information about the stateful object in the first notification as a preliminary action. This establishes the baseline information set, allowing subsequent notifications to be much smaller and less burdensome on the push channel.
3Loss of information
If the system pushes comprehensive notifications continuously, then users are kept fully informed, but resource consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
The data transmission is segmented into an initial comprehensive push and subsequent incremental pushes containing only state changes. This segmentation dramatically reduces the quantity of data transmitted over time while maintaining information completeness.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary action by transmitting complete information initially, establishing a baseline that allows subsequent notifications to be minimal, thus reducing overall data transmission volume while keeping users informed.
Data Source
AI summary
In one embodiment, a method includes receiving content from a first user at a first time, determining whether one or more second users should be notified of the received content based on an associated first priority level, and sending a first notification to these second users. The first notification includes a subset of user-facing information of the received content. The method additionally includes receiving an update to the content from the first user at a second time which is later in time than the first time, determining whether one or more second users should be notified of the received update based on an associated second priority level, and sending a second notification to these second users. The second notification includes a second subset of the user-facing information associated with the received update.