About Email and Ezines
By Bobbette Madonna
Posted Monday, August 16, 2004
About email:
Believe it or not, I see spam taking a back seat to all the talk about what to do with it. People are going balistic over it. Most hate unsolicited email, but when firms sell 1 million addresses for $800 and a small response brings hugh profits to spammers, the incentive to go right on sending spam to us, for the money, will keep the spam flowing. Bulk mailers who allow their customers to hide their true address should voluntarily stop that policy or both parties should be prosecuted and severely punished.
So, what's the answer?
Some have asked and begged the government to get involved. Big mistake. Politicians are of a firm belief - that when they solve problems, they need to get paid, so they regulate, pass laws and tax everywhere they can! Taxing email is on the horizon. You can bet the anti-spam bunch don't mind that at all as they hate ecommerce even more than spam. Who do you think is pushing for government interferrence?
So, again, what's the answer?
Until the person who gets an email hyping something they haven't asked for DELETES it, instead of buying it, we will have spam. Anyone who thinks spam will stop because laws are passed, is really d-u-m-b! Ok, don't believe me? Watch good old California. They just passed a law making spam or any other form of unsolicited e-mail a crime. You get a big fine and go to court. Now, do you think all spammers in California have packed and moved to another state? Not a chance. (http://news.com.com/2100-1024_3-5082049.html)
It's as simple and as complicated as -
Just don't buy it, stupid! - If people who scream spam would just learn to delete it, the noise wouldn't be so loud. Maybe reason would prevail and more and more would indeed "not buy it" and spam would slow down. It will never go away - forget that. As long as there is lusty greed, it's here. I have hope that technology will one day fix things MUCH better than any politician. Keep the internet free from government takeover. Just DELETE it.
About ezines:
On another note, publishing ezines and sending them via email is said to be - by some - on it's way out because of ISPs rejecting emails solely because they receive a certain amount of bouncing emails from any number of IP addresses. That is a sad but serious problem. One that all publishers should watch. I personallydon't see ezines dying, I see them as challenged. I know several publishers who have went the way of RSS feeds. That's, Rich Site Summary and it's a lightweight XML format designed for sharing headlines and other Web content - and it is growing in popularity. I have one on my Resource Center site. (http://logonnewzine.com)
What it does is -
RSS feeds show the headlines and links to your articles to others. You do not e-mail those titles and links to your list subscribers. Those who read my HTML ezines know how I have the title of an article, a short teaser of that article and a link to go to that article so you can read. There you have it in a simple analogy. When someone subscribes to your RSS feed, their news aggregator program will check this file every few hours.When you add articles, the titles will be displayed almost immediately. For an introduction,
visit here: (http://www.mnot.net/rss/tutorial/)
What's a news aggregator you ask?
It's software you install to allows you to receive the RSS feed. Yahoo uses RSS feeds as well as many publishers and thousands of blogs use RSS syndication. Although I don't see RSS feeds taking the place of ezines, I do see them growing in popularity as long as ISPs block and filter ezines. Anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS and each item can have any amount of metadata associated with it. The cost of RSS feeds are free. Get one here: (http://www.rssreader.com/)
In conclusion -
Publishers are a proud and determined bunch. We work very long hours to bring our readers the best information available. We know what is going on and we don't like it. Change is inevitable and most welcome it however, we demand the respect so long denied us by the ISPs and anti-spam bunch. We are the Internet Press. We have a prominent position and we are professionals. Freedom of the Press must and will prevail.
You can take that to the bank.
About the Author:
Bobbette Madonna publishes LOGON NewZine and the Guerrilla Marketing Resource Center. Also, she is the owner of (www.niba4u.com) - a spam watch site and is a partner for the fight against unfair termination of service at (www.spamattorney.biz) The main subscription and marketing resource center for LOGON is at: (http://logonnewzine.com) and you can reach her at: mailto:publisher@logonnewzine.com
