Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam

Spam, luvverly spam (see YouTube below). Or maybe not for very much longer - it would appear users are using the same social networks PR spammers are using to spam people, but to defend themselves. Lifehacker's Gina Trapani has started a PR spammers wiki where people can register PR firms who have spammed them (link courtesy Stowe Boyd)



Stowe also points to a story by Brian Solis which caught my eye, as there is an attempt to define grades of spam:

Spam is intrusive, shotgun-style blasting that usually favors quantity versus quality – meaning, that it doesn’t take into account your interests or preferences.

Bacn (introduced to me by Chris Brogan) stems from the idea that it is better than spam, but not as good as a personal e-mail. Bacn differs from spam in that the emails are not unsolicited: the recipient has somehow signed up to receive it. Bacn is also not necessarily sent in bulk – Wikipedia.

Tofu (new category – suggested name) is email that is sent individually to people who are pre-qualified or identified as being related to, or interested in, a particular category or topic. Or, they have made their email publicly available on their site, thus intentionally or inadvertently inviting contact. I’m not sure what to call it, but the idea for tofu was inspired by the fact that we can almost make it taste like something else, but at the end of the day, it’s still not the real thing.

Maybe different flavours, but still spam methinks.

The solution usually trotted out to get around all this is to have a "conversation" with the customer, build a rusted relationship etc etc. So if everybody says this, why does no one do it uch? Is it lack of training, newbies on the job etc?

Is it heck. This has happened enough times now for lessons to be learned, newbies to be rapped on knuckles, procedures to be designed etc.

No, its to do with the economics of spam. The transaction costs for a spam message are minute compared to a conversation of any stripe, making the cost of any serious conversational campaign of any volume very costly, so there is a sticker shock. Secondly, the payback of any conversational method compared to good old spam are yet to be proven conclusively. Paying a fortune for an unproven approach is not a good way to win friendly clients, who give PR agencies the money to influence people. And for these reasons the PR companies aren't going to stop anytime soon, though they will always point to their newbies and grovel when outed, and/or argue that "the client made me do it"

The obvious thing to do is to raise the transaction cost of sending spam - but that can be hard to do as it entails effort in sorting out a blacklist.

Hence Gina Trapani's cunning plan - essentially she is lowering the cost of raising barriers to spam by using social mdia herself, thus raising the transaction costs of communicating with someone by preventing the cheapest approach, ie spam, which makes the economics of spamming less attractive. And whenever the cost of preventing X approaches the cost of doing X, the "doing X" bit tends to wither away..

Needless to say, PR fanboi's are upset by Gina's elegant system, I love this line:

Well, by publishing it that way, and not providing any safeguard against people maliciously adding to the list with those that are not guilty, she’s just as guilty as those she condemns. Why? Well, she’s just created a vehicle that can harm others. In fact, it is worse. She has not just bothered people with spam, for instance, she’s created a process that may damage one’s reputation unfairly. Talk about Lifehacking. Sheesh!

Sheesh indeed, harming others no less - boot. foot. other. kick. arse.

I love technology arms races, I wonder where this one is going next..... maybe its time to ask the Vikings (see above video....)