spam

by: Ravali Ravulapati

When I get unwanted and unsolicited emails from someone I don’t know, the first thing I do is look for the unsubscribe link. Yet, I’m still struggling with the fact that often when I’ve asked to be “unsubscribed,” an email somehow manages to sneak through to my inbox. This is when I start to doubt myself, “wait a minute, I thought I unsubscribed last time, but maybe I didn’t?”

Guest Post by: Maria Pergolino

According to Google, spam is either a canned meat product made mainly from ham or irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of recipients. 

I don't follow everyone back on Twitter. This is an intentional act. I don't follow everyone back because there are too many spammers to deal with and frankly, If I do follow you back, it's a very intentional act—I follow you for a reason. Tomorrow, somebody can send me an e-mail and say—"we've solved your problem by inventing a service which only follows back real people, no spammers".

Twitter is a mess. Maybe it’s just me, but in the last few weeks the vast majority of my new Twitter followers were bots or people promoting something. Perhaps that’s not unexpected. After all, I’m sure an even higher percentage of my email is spam. In this day and age, it’s a certainty that any free medium will attract abuse. But the problem is that there are lots of enablers for Twitter abuse. Are YOU an enabler of bad behavior?

Maybe this is, like, email marketing 101 (and if so, please leave a comment), but the introductory series of four emails American Airlines sends to its new frequent flier members struck me as unusual. Wonder what it does to open rates.

As far as business use I have always seen and used Twitter as an information gathering tool with an allowance for just a smidge of promotion. I am deeply appreciative of the valuable links and insight posted by those I follow and try to return the same in kind. I've also endured plenty of Twitter spam, as a whole probably no worse than the amount of email spam I get. I do appreciate Twitter's desire to reduce spam.

by: Karl Long

We always knew that someone had to be clicking on penis enlargement emails and not only that, someone had to actually be buying that crap. It’s kind like late at night when you’re watching horrible infomercials that you think to yourself who the hell is buying this crap, well enough people to make it economically viable to make those repugnant commercials.

by: Ilya Vedrashko

I don't know if this letter I just received through the Contact Me form is a case of misdirected anger, a weird spam mutation, or some kind of viral campaign, but if it's the latter, it's the most brilliant piece of copyrighting I've seen in some time. Who can resist clicking the link?

by: Mark Rogers

An excellent article in Red Herring reporting on work by Umbria in Boulder, Colorado, draws attention to the increasing problems posed by spam blogs or splogs. Apparently spam bloggers have targeted 44 out of the top 100 brands.

by: Scott Goodson