Yuppers. The main reason we haven't done this yet is because the notifications system is somewhat unreliable, and we wanted to address some of those issues before making it attract more attention to itself.
Aw man, and here I assumed it was because you were avoiding giving LW the addictive quality of a normal social network.
Heh, I do also think that's important. (There's some very fine line of "exactly the right amount of addictiveness", as well as just making it easy for people to be informed about the things they want to be informed about. My current take is that the ideal Notifications tab should say something but not do the Bright Red Thing that most other sites do)
Currently, when I get notifications, the notifications bubble doesn't look any different, so I don't end up clicking on those notifications. This seems like it would be an incredibly simple fix. Alternatively, maybe there really is a difference in appearance, but it is so subtle that it is easy to miss.