The [Lack of] Paper Chase

I came across an interesting statistic in that Business Week article (see below) that I had to investigate ("Legitimate e-mail will drop to 8% this year, down from 12% last year, according to Redwood City [Calif.] e-mail filtering outfit Postini Inc."). That stat was from a whitepaper released in February 2005. The Postini site has real-time monitoring of the messages the company processes for clients and the current stats show that spam accounts for 69.2% of e-mail messages sent--basically, only 3 out of 10 e-mail messages are "legitimate." I concur. (And is it just me or does "Postini" sound like an Italian breakfast cereal?)

It's funny--at ad:tech last week everyone was droning on and on about how wonderful and rosy e-mail marketing is and while I don't disagree (I occasionally get things I actually am interested in--curse you, Borders and your e-mailed coupons!), but I can't help wonder how much of a future e-mail has, especially if things like wikis and IM become even more popular. Of course, everyone is now discussing how to develop marketing programs for these "new" new media (the first company that sends a promotion to my cellphone will find itself burned to the ground), and viruses can now be transmitted via Instant Messaging. And, of course, there is also spam for IM (called SPIM--I'm not making that up)--so it may eventually become a case of six of one, half dozen of another. Who knows? We may end up creating new communications media just to escape from older virus- and spam-infected media.

It reminds me, in a way, of a scene from one of my favorite books of all time (Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler) in which a character is walking past a row of houses and, as he passes one house, a phone inside rings. He steps up his pace, and as he passes the next house, a phone inside it rings. He runs down the street, and as he passes each house, a phone inside rings--and he realizes: he is being chased by telephone! So we may all end up being chased by spam, running from one medium to the next. Maybe we should return to writing and mailing physical letters. Wouldn't it be scary to write a letter, mail it to someone, and, when they open it, suddenly all this crap falls out of the envelope?

Y'know, whenever I get to sitting and thinking about the future, all I come back to is just how annoying it's going to be.