App developers: Sending your users “test” push notifications is annoying, so don’t do it

If you’re a mobile device user, you know how wonderful push notifications can be. Without having to open an app, you can see if someone replied to your witty Tweet or if you have a meeting coming up.

However, notifications can also be annoying, especially if sent “accidentally.” Today, the popular Tap Tap Revenge game sent out three tests in a row that looked something like this:

Naturally, I went to Twitter to complain and saw that others got the push notifications as well. The @TapTapRevenge account on Twitter spit this out:

If you received a push notification saying “hello to all” 3 times, we were testing our ability to provide you information about Tour :)

— Tap Tap Revenge (@TapTapRevenge) August 10, 2012

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Um, yeah that’s not going to be good enough. There are ways to test push notifications in a way that doesn’t affect your global userbase. Of course, by annoying your users, you just brought up your DAU (daily active user) numbers. I opened the app just to see what the notification meant. The developer, in this case Disney, gets to count me as an active user for the day.

Fail.

I understand that mistakes happen, but when you’re working for a huge company and have a pretty sizable userbase, there’s really no excuse for this. The fact that push notifications get misused is why a lot of people turn them off, and that’s not good for anyone.

Developers, don’t test in production please.