I thought it always did that? If that's a new thing then cool .
It did when you have new PMs, you'll log on and it'll say "9" if you have, say, 1 PM and 8 alerts (which was fine since you automatically got to say ":yay: PM's!". But if you had alerts but no new PM's it didn't say anything.
Hey, and it always seems to alert you of new posts in the thread instead of just doing it whenever it feels like it. Gonna have fun exploring around here doing stuff now.