If you're a member of a lot of groups or have a lot of pending invites they probably generate a fair few messages in your facebook inbox that you don't really care about. The messages you DO care about tend to be the ones from an individual to you. Those are the ones you want to be notified about by email and not the rest.
At the moment facebook doesn't give you the option to be notified about one type of message but not the other. That means your email inbox can quickly fill up with facebook notifications that don't interest you.
One answer is to use email filters and in this post I'll explain how to set that up.
I use gmail so the instructions will be for that system but the same principal applies whatever you use.
First I'll talk you through how to set it up then I'll explain how it works.
Setting up a gmail filter to delete uninteresting facebook notifications
1) Find your way to gmail's filters section.
To do that click "settings" in the top right corner then click the "filters" tab.
2) Click "Create a new filter". You'll then be presented with the following screen (click to enlarge):
3) In the "From" box type: Facebook
4) In the "Has the words" box type: "sent a message to the members of"
Include the speech marks
5) Click the Next Step button
6) Tick the Delete It box
7) Click the Create Filter button
That's it!
From now on you will only receive notifications of messages sent from individuals to you and not from groups or events. You'll still get notifications of invites and stuff like that but that can be switched on and off directly from facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/editaccount.php?notifications
How does it work?
Let's look at a notification email received from a group:
And now let's look at a notification from an individual:
The text that sets them apart is "sent a message to the members of" so that's what goes in the filter. Once you've singled them out you send them directly to the trash.
One final tip for managing you facebook inbox...
You can click on the blue circles next to your messages to mark them as read without having to click into them. Quite a useful time saver.
You can also use gmail filters to tame your freegle and freecycle subscriptions. Find out how here.
Any gmail filters you can't live without? Tell us about them in the comments.
