Lots of interesting points, my thought are here ( http://martysmind.com/2007/12/28/what-is-spam/ )

-Marty

Your position about spam is pretty close to what i heard opinionated recently by Daniel in similar conversation. Interestingly enough your/Daniel reaction about this kind of spam is much stronger then mine, which is close to ambivalent. As long as its not enlargement pills of Nigerian gold I will not count it as spam, especially if it’s coming from a friend.

Now, that would be pretty minor thing, yet few days ago I got into discussion with one of extremely successful FB developer (300,000+ daily many of his apps) who shared a bit of his “teenager mindset” model he uses in app design. Part of which was extreme orientation toward what you just defined as spam. It’s not even a problem he is trying to “solve”. It’s a feature sometimes *requested* by teen users. Why? because its easy! Click here to send X to all your friends. Click here to share Y will all of them. Will teen sit and painstakingly select who needs to get what? never. does he cares about his “social capital”? Actually, he will consider he GAINS it by sending MORE stuff to his friends. He is already too bombarded with real-time stream from his AIM, SMS, wall updates, TV turned on, homework in front of him, etc, etc. He is in constant communication overload but doesn’t think he is overloaded – he was born into culture where this is the norm, not at exception. You always have to shout to be heard.

That whole lesson was extremely interesting. One realization I had afterwards that our phobia of “spam” could be rooted in fact we actually seen the net without it. Perhaps person exposure to early, high-quality, low traffic, elitist internet early years is directly proportional to his disdain to “spammy” behavior?

Assuming teen behavior is “way of the future” (which most likely is true since they ARE the future) we may come up with pretty surprising realization our saber rattling against spam could be meaningless cultural attribute of “early net” generation, without much moral and factual foundation. When I started coming up with imaginary arguments vs hypothetical teen to explain “you shall not spam your friends!” commandment I suddenly realized my arguments are not much better then something our grandparents would say against say same-sex marriages: “people don’t do that to each other”, “that’s just wrong”, etc.

I wound’t consider a blanket permission to spam, but its definitely worthwhile for guys our age ask ourselves more often “what would teen do in such and such situation?”

We have to be careful not to confuse what we dislike with what sells.

As for “Don’t Worry Be Crappy”: Software is iterative. This is because we are inherently unable to judge the attractiveness of a product till we put it in the customers hands. There is a fine line between Crap and iterative, but the message is still valid.

-Marty

Gossip mongering?

Why not a site that debates marketing ideas and practices, called Trustwhores?

This article didn’t address that point, but it’s a relevant topic and perhaps it should have.

-Marty

The netiquette for promotions in most socnets is to provide 80% education and 20% promotion. If you can trust and respect from your free advice, some may pay to receive specific advice and other products.

To use Twitter and Facebook exclusively as tools to sell products or drive traffic to sites is not wise. A negative buzz, a backlash can and does occur with such selfish behaviors.

Spam is unwanted commercial/self-serving messages. Bacn is barely wanted messages.

That, is precisely my point. We put expectations on people that have nothing to do with the reality of who they are or what we would expect form others.

We have to be careful when we have an emotional reaction to someones actions. It is good to examine why rather than, as some have, simply complain about it.

-Marty

When did Guy claim to be a 100% purely objective 3rd party critic to personally serve you?