Relevance and Spam

Spam is the opposite of relevance.  Spam is irrelevant and interuptive.  Its why spam simply doesn't work as a marketing tactic.  Spam is non targeted and simply sent out indiscriminately.

If we want our messages to reach our audience, they must be relevant.  And not just a little bit relevant.  If the message is only slightly relevant, its still probably spam.  It must be highly relevant if its going to reach the audience and cause them to take an action.

Where there are people, there's Spam

Spam is nothing new. It started with email, but is quickly spreading like a virus to each new emerging technology and platform. Right as each technology hits the tipping point and moves from early adopters to mainstream use, that's when the spammers start.

It happened this year with Twitter. One search of a trending topic shows real conversations, mixed an increasing amount of Spam.

Mayra Ruiz notes on her blog, "What is up on LinkedIn these days? I have heard countless folks complain about *all the limitless spam* that can be found in groups." Linkedin groups are full of Spam too.

With each new technology, the spammers find a way to abuse it and spread their Spam and as long as there are people there, they will continue.

One thing that concerns me is Facebook's talk of making the popular social network more public than private. Right now, the privacy wall does a pretty good job of keeping the spammers out. But I guarantee, the more public Facebook becomes, the more Spam we will see. (Personally I think making profiles public will be the death of Facebook).

If social networks and other emerging technologies aren't careful to control Spam, they will lose value and people won't use them. And no one, is immune to this.

Worse Than Spam

The Windows Live team isn't fooling anyone by trying to pass promo spam off as a tech support email.

The only thing worse than SPAM is when the company spamming you, acknowledges within the spam itself, that they aren't supposed to spam you and trys to pass the spam off the as something else.

Today, I received this email from the Windows Live Team.



They acknowledge within the email, "your settings do not allow Microsoft to send you promotional information", yet they are emailing me anyway?

Maybe they think that they are fooling someone by disguising it as "contacting you regarding your communication preference settings". As if this makes it non promotional.

But at the end of the day, they sent me this email to promote the changing of my settings so that they could send me promotions. Lame attempt.

I don't actually use this account for anything real. I use Gmail. But I guess it fits, since I only use this account to fill out forms that I think I might get spammed from. And I did.