Oct 14

Here’s an interesting debate we had this morning in our office:

Would you consider this Twitter account SPAM?

Or the deeper question here: how do you define SPAM?

  • By a certain practice used to reach people?
  • By any unsolicited message with commercial-serving intent?
  • By a shotgun-style approach in communication?
  • By the relevancy of the message to the recipient?
  • It can’t be left to a completely relativistic definition because it becomes impossible to make laws to protect against it (ie. the one guy that happened to be wanting to buy viagra this morning finds the SPAM email to be very timely and useful, but that doesn’t justify the annoyance for the rest of us). On the other side of the continuum, it can’t be boiled down to specific practices because that’s what Bruce Schneier would call “the futility of defending the targets.” Here’s my position on the matter:

    I monitor key phrases on Twitter, certain sequences of words that indicate a user has a problem that one of our free JumpBoxes could solve. I skim hundreds of these tweets and select the few that we can help and respond to them individually introducing them to our product. I documented this technique awhile back. I’d say all but two of the 68 responses I’ve gotten from reaching out to people in this way have been received with appreciation. Two people have responded calling foul.

    According to the Twitter TOS the account above clearly violates the “If your updates consist mainly of links, and not personal updates” rule. But that could be satisfied by peppering it with personal updates and fluff. The reason I don’t do this out of my personal account or our JumpBox account is because doing so would inundate the followers of those with a bunch of repetitive info that’s uninteresting to them. But I digress. The point is there are ways to satisfy the TOS requirements but that just feels shady. I can see someone making the argument that this technique is not the “personal updates” spirit of use of what Twitter intended. I get that.

    But here’s what I don’t understand:

    • Making a freeware product recommendation for someone else’s product on a mailing list in response to a need that a participant expresses. Completely 100% kosher and expected.
    • Making a freeware product recommendation that’s your own on a mailing list when appropriate… cheesy maybe but still completely appropriate.
    • Making a freeware product recommendation of your own product in a distributed micro-blogging environment like Twitter where you single out a recipient who expresses a need your free product solves and you direct a thoughtful reply to that person… sorry but I see that as a legitimate way of reaching out to people. It’s not like you’re cluttering their inbox- it’s a message that appears on their @replies page in Twitter.

    If you were tying to sell them something- okay, I agree. If you were repeatedly harassing the same person- gotcha. But a one-time message that makes them aware of a solution that’s free and completely unique such that they would never know to search for it in the first place, I don’t see the SPAMiness in that. Anyways I’m probably going to be discontinuing this practice not because I think it’s spammy but because the return isn’t there time-wise.

    What do you think about this practice and the bigger question of how do we define what constitutes SPAM in the evolving world of social media?

    Oct 03

    preparation
    I have no idea if this story is true or not but it’s a neat parable on the value of preparation:

    A large top-tier law firm in New York was hiring a new attorney. They had taken hundreds of applications from recent law school graduates and had narrowed the search to three candidates, all of whom had first-rate GPA’s, achievements and LSAT’s. The firm flew the three candidates out over the weekend for an interview during which they were to present a mock brief to all the partners. The presentations would be the deciding factor of which candidate was selected.

    The candidates arrived on Friday evening and were given a tour of the office. The next morning they returned and gathered in the conference room where all the firm’s partners had assembled to hear the presentations. One by one they gave their 30-minute talks. Each one had done thorough research on the subject matter and had prepared compelling powerpoint slides. The first two candidates demonstrated supreme lawyering skills and “Perry Mason-like” courtroom demeanor. When the third candidate took the podium and it was immediately clear that he lacked the charisma of the other two.

    About halfway through his talk a gunshot rang out interrupting his presentation. Turns out it was actually the projector bulb on the conference table that had exploded. Given that it was the weekend there were no maintenance people on duty to replace the bulb. It seemed he would have to continue his presentation without slides. At this point however the candidate did something interesting – he calmly opened his briefcase and withdrew a spare projector bulb of the correct size and wattage. Within minutes he had replaced it and resumed his talk with his slides.

    Apparently during the tour the previous evening he had surveyed the conference room, noted the projector model and gone out that night and purchased a spare bulb as a contingency plan.

    All three presentations demonstrated thorough preparedness and while the third candidate lacked the superior speaking skills, his “meta-preparedness” sold the partners that he was someone who covered every base. The following week the third candidate received an offer to join the firm.

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