Quote:
Originally posted by charly
In the 9 months I've been working the net I've learnt that some of you have weird ideas.
If someone signs up to view our site I think he is interested in buying our content. But when we send him updates on new content, we're spamming. But he does not give me his real name so I can remove him. I suppose he just likes to shout.
Someone asks for real teen content providers and I put up a picture to show we have real teens. Again I'm accused of spamming, usually by someone with a banner in his sig. Why do you think most of us are here? To help others put us out of business or promote our own businesses?
Or are we just hearing too much from the newbies, partimers and kids. Who like to shout the loudest and longest regardless of what they say.
Spam is another form of marketing, close that down and life would be different. Imagine a world with out marketing.
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Charly, this whole anti-spam thing goes back to the beginning of the Internet when those who jumped on the bandwagon saw a totally noncommercial form of communication and thought they could keep it that way.
To some people, just having a commercial website and charging for products or services is spamming. We are all bombarded with advertising. Shit, most magazines are 3/4 or more advertising for products we don't want and don't want to know about, for the most part. However, we don't think of that as spam.
On this board, I find some spam offensive and some not. As you well know, there are ways to do it and ways not to. Most of us don't mind the "introductory spam" ("I'm new to the board, my business is ABC Enterprises, and here's an example [or link] to what I do"). We do mind the guy who never participates except to plug his product or service.
We content providers can wait for someone to ask a question and do a minor spam at that time by saying "I can do that, and here's an example." I'm sure even that offends some of the more anal among us, but my impression is that most don't mind. Most don't mind looking at pretty chicks, which gives us content providers an edge over the guys offering hosting services, etc.
At any rate, just as "junk mail is the business correspondence you don't want," so "spam is the commercial Internet message you don't need or want at the time you get it." I suspect most of us have found the occasional useful spam, which is why I don't complain about it much.