AOL’s Email Misunderstanding (and the Rights of Spammers)

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I (and many others) wrote about AOL and Yahoo’s announcement regarding the enhanced emailer whitelist and the use of Goodmail last week, and now it seems like there has been a misunderstanding, and that the enhanced whitelist will remain in effect.  From my perspective, this mitigates the issue to a point, but does not resolve it.

I still have a problem with AOL, if it charges me for a mailbox, and makes me subject to spam, just because a spammer thinks I am worth the fraction of a penny to reach.  I have much less of a problem if Google displays ads on the side, without cluttering my inbox.

The second method, if anything, should be the ONLY way I should be marketed to.

Exhibit A: Evidence that the Media2.0 Disruption will be Huge

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Is NBC really planning to distribute content via its own set-top box?  It’s being reported via Reuters, and really nowhere else, so I don’t know if this is accurate.  If it is, I think it’s idiotic that NBC is doing deals with HW/SW companies like Aeon Digital.  Why lock itself up?  With its brand strength, all that NBC needs to do is:

  1. Digitize its content
  2. Make it findable
  3. Set the rules on how it gets paid

Why are they risking all kinds of potential trouble by alliances like these?  If Aeon wants to feature NBC content, it can agree to pay NBC and get the syndicated content. No need to complicate things.

Octopus

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My good friend Jessica Hirsch has launched her new company Octopus.  While it’s not the typical web/tech/media company I tend to follow or write about, I love ventures evolving out of real-life experiences.  The Octopus definitely qualifies as an example of a great product borne from a genuine need.

Istanbul New Economy Group – February Meeting

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We have set the date for the Istanbul New Economy Group meeting in February.  The details and the RSVP channel is at this link.  To be informed of the developments at the Istanbul NEG, I recommend joining the Yahoo Group.  Alternatively, you can subscribe to this blog, either via the Bloglet utility on this page, or the RSS feed, both on the right hand column.  I will keep blogging about the developments here, as well.

The February meeting will incorporate a few presentations by companies.  If you’d like to present, please let me know.

Via Dave Beisel of Masthead Venture Partners, I have discovered the wiki used by a group called Boston Web Innovators Group.  I think a wiki is an ideal way of organizing communications for a group like this.  If anyone can volunteer to set up and host a wiki, let me know.

UPDATE: For those who have not been following this topic, here are the previous posts on the Istanbul NEG:

The Idea

The Preparation

The Recap

Are Ringtones Microchunks?

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I have written about microchunks before.  It’s a term I have adopted from Fred Wilson.

Today, Fred posts about the size of these microchunks, bringing to debate, if, as the song (on iTunes) is replacing the album format, the ring tone will replace the song.

I disagree with Fred because I don’t think a ring-tone is a microchunk of the song.  The song is art at an atomic level.  You can not take a part of a song, a note, etc., and treat it as art.  I think a ring tone is a piece of content, in and of itself, related to the song. It is not the same relationship that an SNL skit on Youtube has with the full show on TV.

Fred goes on to wonder, "How is it that a five second sample of a song is worth $1.99 and the
entire song is worth $0.99?  How is it that these five second samples
are getting more and more popular as the sales of the songs themselves
stagnate and may actually be in decline?"

The answer is that songs and ringtones address very different consumption needs.  Songs are about entertainment.  People listen to and enjoy them.  Ringtones are about personalization.  They are a means of expression.

Yahoo! and AOL Sneakily Selling Our Attention

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(Let me start this with a disclosure:  I do not like AOL.  I don’t like their walls, which they finally took down recently, and nickel-and-dime attitudes.)

NY Times reported Sunday that Yahoo and AOL are planning to roll out a paid email service that will charge emailers to send email to their members and be assured of delivery.

I think that’s bullshit.  So far, I have tolerated Yahoo’s occasional filtering errors that resulted in legitimate email that I’m expecting to fall into the spam folder.  Mostly, I thought, that Yahoo’s making an honest effort to identify spam, and it was human (or in this case, of Bayesian filter) nature to err.

Now they are selling a bypass to that filter to anyone who’s willing to pay to get to me.

First, I pay AOL and Yahoo to provide me with the service.  In the case of AOL, it’s dollars, and in the case of Yahoo, it’s my attention to the ads.  That’s our deal.  If they will further pimp out my attention, then I deserve to get most of that money (BTW, this is where Root Markets will come into play, eventually).  Tom Evslin makes a strong argument for this point.

Second, this is a dangerous nod to spam, as long as spammers are willing to spend money.  Brad Feld and Matt Blumberg (who’s another player in the email business) addresses this point effectively in their posts on the topic.

One interesting idea that has developed in the virtual discussion surrounding this issue is that this points to the eventual success of RSS.  Steve Gillmor states:

"Who do you trust? My bet: those who shift the profit from the Spam Flag to the [users]-in-charge. "  Read: RSS

I thought it was interesting that on the heels of this news came first the scoop, and then the announcement that Fred Wilson’s USV made a catch up investment in Feedburner, an ambitious RSS player, after they had apparently passed on the Series A round a few months ago.

UPDATE: Seth Godin disagrees with me (and other linked to in this post).