I really like the spinning red wheel, especially when it gets to 99+, but when you select ‘View Notifications’, you get this droned list of notifications, there has to be some way, in this case to accentuate some of the notifications, maybe +1, are another color than some you’ve commented on. There is so much information, that a classification, or a taxonomy would be helpful. Even some of the comments I’ve put on someone’s Post, I am not interested in being notified if someone adds additional comments, so maybe, a ‘don’t notify’ on a particular post, does that exist, in truth, haven’t checked. Anyway, it seems like all tweet notifications, or DMs can be easily differentiated, but all tweet notifications as well as Google Plus, or FB notifications seem to be treated equal, it’s NOISE, and we will drown in notifications and start to ignore them, and let some of the good ones pass us by. I would say an API that allows you to filter notifications by key words, and then that central program can handle your notifications. If there is an API for notifications, which we know Twitter has, not sure about Google Plus, but there has got to be a 3rd party tool already out there that does this Simple rules engine. Get the noise out of your notifications and filter and/or prioritize the tweets and Google Plus notifications to want to see first. It looks like Google Plus did some color alternations between alternate types of notifications, but its not as intuitive as it could be.
I would also like to see the Android Operating System and the Apple iOS expand out their icons to include variation of the application notification. I don’t think this is available with the 4.01 Android OS, variants of the tweet icon, e.g., still awaiting my update from Samsung for my S3. 
