If it wasn’t already difficult enough to avoid distraction during our work day, the developers over at Twitter have given us Tweet notifications.

Now is you are logged in on Twitter.com you’ll get a notification for replies, favourite, retweets, direct messages and new followers. We are very much used to this functionality on our mobiles, but bringing it to the desktop is a whole new level of annoyance.

The updates are rolling out slowly, and will look similar to this:

If notifications aren’t your thing you will be able to manage them directly in your Twitter settings.

A Business Opportunity?

For businesses, knowing that your audience may have notifications turned on by default on their desktop could open up opportunities if used cautiously.

What about a “@USERNAME reply within 5 minutes for an instant win” style competition?

Let me know how you might make use of desktop notifications, on Twitter of course, as my notification settings will always be on!