As Forbes.com columnist Chris Kraeuter says, "What's worse than spam...? Perhaps the methods e-mail systems use to fight it." Kraeuter argues that AOL and Yahoo's plan to charge marketers who send
bulk messages to users will do nothing to cut down on the amount of spam sent to users. In fact, it will do little more than provide an added revenue stream for AOL and Yahoo. What it does, instead,
is "raise the participation bar" for legitimate marketers, newsletter writers (such as ourselves) and others who actually have a reason to get in touch with you. Goodmail, the e-mail company hired by
the Web giants, will attempt to determine "good" from "bad" e-mail, by certifying them--an unconscionably big job when you consider that some 84 billion messages are sent each day and about 40 percent
are spam. Kraeuter says the move is hardly necessary when the market may prove to be a quicker fix: growing communication forms like instant messaging, text messages on cell phones, and RSS feeds may
one day render e-mail obsolete.
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