[ih] "Father of e-Marketing"

[Brian E Carpenter]

On 02-Jun-19 06:47, Bill Ricker wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sat, Jun 1, 2019 at 2:11 PM Dave Crocker <dhc at dcrocker.net <mailto:dhc at dcrocker.net>> wrote:
> 
>     On 6/1/2019 3:58 PM, Vint Cerf wrote:
>     > i think the spam wasn't quite e-marketing as much as it was just abuse
>     > of a mailinglist....
> 
> 
> It could both be the latter and also be if not the former at least a fore-runner of the former?
> 
>     1. Abuse of mail, certainly -- and especially for the rules and mores in
>     force at the time -- but it was a hand-generated addressee list into the
>     message, not part of a list processor redistribution mechanism.
> 
> 
> To be fair, we usually do something once manually before automating it, to see how it works and set the specifications. So while automation is required for full-blown e-marketing, i wouldn't require it of the patient 0.
> 
>     3. I recently heard that in spite of the community outrage, the campaign
>     was actually successful.  It generated a goodly number of purchases for
>     what it was promoting.
> 
> 
> Not at all surprising.
> DEC had good product in the day, and the target list was reasonably well targetted.
> And IIRC the outrage stuck to the particular sender, not to the company.
> 
> Q. Was not boycotting DEC because of spam because the company disavowed his trespass quickly or because it was just assumed he was a loose cannon, that executives wouldn't understand sufficiently to condone and be complicit?
> 
>     By this measure, it will might qualify as e-marketing.  alas...
> 
> 
> Nothing appears initially in fully evolved form.
> The DEC spam is at least proto-Spam, proto-e-marketing; as would be unsolicited offers on TELEX and Fax.
> 
> (<pedantic/> It's not "spam" in the narrowest allusive sense of spam spam spamitty spam repetition ... though it should have been sent repeatedly to a different 20 at a time instead of all at once ! but blasting to too many recipients unrequested is also classed under the rubric of Spam today.)
> 
> Q. Was up-thread reference to Telegraphic spam via flat rate a reference to TELEX or to prior art? I would be interested in references to any pre-TELEX telegraphic (as in dots and dashes, not Baudot) spam. Although using a PDP-[:digit:] or hardcoded controller to robodial a programmed TELEX spam list (or list of numbers on second papertape reader, with message on a loop) would be very interesting too.

I have nothing concrete about telegraphic spam, but there wasn't really enough automation until 1914 or so to allow anything except manually generated advertising telegrams, which I don't think would count: it's automation that enables spam, surely?

For a contemporary look at the state of telegraph automation in 1914, see https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~brian/MurrayTTY.pdf . It includes performance data. If you find Donald Murray intriguing, see the https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/historydisplays/FifthFloor/Murray/MurrayMain.php , which was created by my late friend Bob Doran.

Regards
   Brian Carpenter