Last week, we talked a little bit about the Follow concept. It was discussed that the terminology Follow is widely used now and recognized.

When taking a look at Facebook, the closest thing they have is the Notification concept. The Notification icon is the 3rd one from the top. This option includes in one area all notifications from various options. Among them also includes some Follow concept. As Facebook includes a lot of notifications, some of them are based on a Follow concept and some others simply just notifications about pretty much whatever Facebook can see as valuable and customizable from the account.

In an application I am working on, we have an initial Follow concept. So, I started by doing some work on it and found that this option would rapidly evolve and provide more follow types and notifications. In that concept, I believe the approach of using a general terminology of Notifications would fit better. When regrouping everything in one area, so to let the user know about important things he asked to be notified on, I would then assume Notifications would be the terminology to use. At first, I named all the related tables starting with Follow and so is pretty much all the related items, such as form and list names. This morning, I thought I would open another discussion as when I see it in a general approach like that, I would believe the concept of Notifications would then include also the Follow options.

Any feedback would be appreciated.