Notification Database - Social Sites

Databases
1

I am finding it sort of daunting working with Notification to make it work like facebook.

This is what I have:
Notifications table

notificationid int
notification varchar
createdate smalldatetime
memberId int --member id of the person causing the action

NotificationViewHistory table

notificationid int
memberId --id of the member seen this notificationid

I did take a look at the schema how facebook is doing it. apparently they seem to be saving the entire message in html/plain text format.

If i look at linkedin, they seem to save notifications for different parts of the website in different tables. for groups, profile etc.

i am trying to have something that will allow me save minimal amount of data on database tables.

anybody got suggestions?

2

email feature is redundant in this case for me.

3

So in the mailbox from the application itself?

4

this is mainly intended for users to get an update on their friend activities.
I guess this same thing could be used for email notifications as well.

5

This Notification, does it take place by email?