Comments on: Comments on 17211

Post number 17211

pmurray63 — Thu, 16 May 2002 22:19:54 -0800

It takes all kinds: Marketing guy claims "I love spam."

By: pmurray63

pmurray63 — Thu, 16 May 2002 22:21:59 -0800

I should have made clear: he's not talking about sending it... he claims to love reading it. I'm not making this up.

By: palegirl

palegirl — Thu, 16 May 2002 22:31:34 -0800

best sentence ever: I think a few well-meaning but uninformed politicians and advocacy groups have decided what's good for us, and in their zeal, they are trying to establish a new and unwarranted benchmark for the marketing channel we call the Internet, and for one of its components: e-mail. what a guy!

By: mathowie

mathowie — Thu, 16 May 2002 22:33:44 -0800

This just in: Exxon spokesperson John Meredith loves his Ford Excursion!

By: evanizer

evanizer — Thu, 16 May 2002 22:36:45 -0800

They tell me about things I'm interested in, such as services and products that might satisfy some of my needs. They provide information referrals, ideas and food for thought. "U like YOUNG TITE SCHOOLGIRLS??? SHOCKING XXX!!!! fhe3354" I can imagine his inbox filled with similar offers for services and products that might satisfy some of his needs. And he likes them. We're dealing with an old perv here, folks. Or maybe this is all an elaborate joke?

By: rusty

rusty — Thu, 16 May 2002 22:39:23 -0800

A soon as spammers pay for my internet access, they can have the right to use my bandwidth. Till then...

By: mattpfeff

mattpfeff — Thu, 16 May 2002 23:13:24 -0800

I noticed he didn't include his own email address with that article. It's too bad, I'm sure we could have all helped him out.

By: Poagao

Poagao — Thu, 16 May 2002 23:17:27 -0800

Yeah, of course he loves spam. He makes a huge amount of money from it. A thief loves theft. Duh.

By: i_am_joe's_spleen

i_am_joe's_spleen — Thu, 16 May 2002 23:18:53 -0800

about the writer
Barry Dennis is president of Netweb, an Internet and offline marketing and public relations agency.

By: nicwolff

nicwolff — Thu, 16 May 2002 23:30:03 -0800

Yeah, but even a thief won't claim to love being stolen from! No, this guy is extra-special full of shit. Here's his extra-crappy Web page. You could e-mail him at BDennis410@aol.com or call his voicemail at (410) 591-1900 if you want to let him know how full of shit he is.

By: krisjohn

krisjohn — Thu, 16 May 2002 23:30:45 -0800

I just visited http://www.netweb.com/ and it triggered my anti-virus system with an alert about the "Happy Time" worm. Maybe a hacker submitted the story from this idiot's email address...

By: krisjohn

krisjohn — Thu, 16 May 2002 23:32:46 -0800

Ah, not the same Netweb... He's on AOL and has a GeoCities site? I wouldn't trust him to tell me the sky is blue.

By: sherman

sherman — Thu, 16 May 2002 23:40:05 -0800

"Netweb." indeed. And the photo? This has to be a joke. I'm assuming — and could be really wrong — that this is them, in which case the malformed mailto: link proves...what? No other links on their page.

By: pracowity

pracowity — Fri, 17 May 2002 00:50:29 -0800

That last link from sherman triggers my virus scanner. The page apparently has a "VBS/Haptime.gen@MM" virus.

By: dobbs

dobbs — Fri, 17 May 2002 01:36:52 -0800

i think the article is a way of harvesting email addresses. send him an angry letter and he'll add you to his database. :)

By: chipr

chipr — Fri, 17 May 2002 01:45:18 -0800

I don't know anybody that wants to limit his right to receive commercial mail. Unlike telephones or postal mail, I pay the full cost to operate my mailbox. I should have the right to manage how that mailbox is used. Once I have control over my mailbox, I may choose to opt into spam. More likely I'll choose not to. But the choice ought to be mine.

By: dlewis

dlewis — Fri, 17 May 2002 03:12:01 -0800

Good for you, Barry! If there's one thing America needs it's more spam. Can you imagine a world without spam? ** shudder **

By: benjh

benjh — Fri, 17 May 2002 03:58:04 -0800

Spam, first and foremost, is bandwidth and resource theft. Nothing short of it. The difference between direct mail marketing and e-mail marketing is that when using the post office, it becomes an exercise in targeting, because each individual piece costs someone cash to mail it out. On the other hand, SPAM can be sent nearly-free, and the recipient is really the one who pays for it. As consumer broadband services start to go towards a metered usage of bandwidth, this will become even more prevelant. Right now, consumers just have to deal with downloading it, but once they start paying for it, then they are being fined to read someone else's marketing message that was not asked for. And this doesn't even nearly take into consideration the massive amounts of storage space required on the servers to store all these messages which were never requested. Finally, you have the noise factor. Perhaps a message might be useful unsolicited. (For example, let's say someone complains about their Internet Service Provider on a message board, and someone writes them an e-mail (note, should be written personally, not by a bot) telling them about what they think is a better internet provider. But trying to filter out the noise from the signal in your inbox is an absolutely rediculous endeavor now. If I increased my penis size 2-3 inches every time I received an e-mail saying it could increase my penis 2-3 inches, well, let's be frank, I'd be hanging to my ankles when I walk. Too much noise, no signal.

By: dlewis

dlewis — Fri, 17 May 2002 04:58:08 -0800

benjh: You are quite correct. It's the theft question that needs to be addressed above everything else. Words such as "unsolicited" and "noise" just bounce off the ears of most marketers. Here in Europe some people still pay for internet access by metered local rate phone calls. It's like a telephone marketing company cold calling you with reverse charges. Plus hijacking computing resources from schools in less wealthy nations is a questionable business practice at best.

By: TuffAustin

TuffAustin — Fri, 17 May 2002 07:10:34 -0800

Speaking of Spam! Join us this weekend in Austin for our annual Spamarama! Bringing the dignity back to potted pork.