Perhaps, then, instead of storing a bit that indicates that it has been viewed (assuming that is how you are doing it), you store the time and date value and check for a nul entry in the event that is has not been viewed? Doing this should not increase the queries as you are just querying for different data.
The value I have seen in this is when an announcement is made in the forums for whatever reason, people have stated that they never read the message. If there was a time limit on response to a message, if they had read the message, the time stamp would indicate that they saw it in the time allowed and had the chance to respond.
In any case, it is a great hack. This is just that extra function that I would not mind seeing.
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