Boyink! - Spring Forward on the Web

Companies will soon have to buy the electronic equivalent of a postage stamp if they want to be certain that their e-mail will be delivered to many of their customers. New York Times Article >>

Well, I feel like I have egg on my face.  Somehow I missed the news from last week that AOL and Yahoo are looking to start a system that gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay to have the messages delivered.

I’m not quite sure what I think of the idea yet—it seems to have some good benefits and some serious drawbacks.  Some marketers are calling for a return to snail mail, but I tend to agree with the call to take a deeper look at RSS.

Comments are closed, but you can read the comments other people left.

1. nate Klaiber on February 16, 2006

   RSS is definitely something to look to - problem is, spam is EVERYWHERE. It is even laced in the RSS now, with google like advertisements being thrown in on certain feeds. So, will people eventually be turned off by this as well?

   Personally, and I wrote about this last week at:
   http://theklaibers.com/?p=33
   I just dont see how it can work in the digital world. There are just too many loopholes that will cause this idea to fail.

   The idea that it will work compared to the way it works with snail mail is based on too many assumptions if you ask me.

2. Michael Boyink (Author) on February 16, 2006

   Hi Nate -

   I’m still getting my arms around the idea and it’s implications, but how would setting up a new mail server factor in?

   My understanding is that it’s not the source of the message, it’s the target—those AOL and Yahoo users I’m trying to send to.  If I pay, I get “better” service in that I know my message gets to their inbox.

   My thought - no matter the medium, my tolerance for advertising is going to be a factor of my perpception of the value of the message containing the ads.  If the content is great, I’ll put up with some ads.  If the ads overwhelm the content - I’ll unsubscribe.

3. nate Klaiber on February 16, 2006

   Michael,
   I would agree with the advertisements part. They are not inherently evil as most make them out to be, in fact, some are very helpful.

   You are correct about the AOL and Yahoo target. However, it is the same concept for those who send you junk mail via snail mail. This type of stuff can still get through, in which case you would filter it to a junk mail box. But, that doesn’t stop those who are still willing to pay to send you messages. I think it is taking away the control that the user currently has - and makes assumptions about incoming mail and what it is flagged as. Also, these are only 2 (though MAJOR) ISPs who are going to do this.

   How does this affect me if I use my own webmail from my personal domain? Do they think that users will switch to their service because of this? What about work - this is not available on our work domain either. What is to stop spammers from sending me junk mail this way.

   So, not that I dont think its a good idea - I just think that the scope is too large to really be successful, whether they try to filter at the source or the target.

4. Joel Vande Berg on February 16, 2006

   I really find this disturbing.  A company that sells access to my mailbox - a resource that I pay them to provide - is a company that wouldn’t get my business.  Especially, since most of these providers also market their service with antivirus filtering and anti-spam email filters.  The fact that the companies sell you on the features they provide and then turnaround and circumvent it by allowing paid spammers access seems like a conflict of interest.

5. salguod on February 17, 2006

   I’m with Joel on this.  As I understand it, AOL & Yahoo would be selling the right to bypass their spam filter, something as a subscriber I was either paying for or factored into my decision to use their service over another.  I wouldn’t consider buying service from someone claiming to offer me a service (blocking spam) for a fee and them taking another fee from someone else to bypass said service.

   This isn’t the first of this sort of thing.  Think about caller ID.  For a fee, I can get info about incoming calls.  As the caller, I might not want to give that info out.  Well, for a fee the phone company will block my info to the folks paying the fee to get it.

   Quite a racket on both parts, eh?

6. Brian Clark on February 19, 2006

   Hi Mike, thanks for the mention of my call for faster RSS adoption.

   Nate, as far as ads in RSS go, people are going to do what they can to monetize content.  But, from an end-user standpoint, the feed can only be opt-in.  And if the trade-out between the content and the ads is not worth it, one click and the reader never sees it again.

   Big improvement over email.

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