MEMPS: The New Must-Have Syndrome for the Serious E-mail User

It's a new disorder to arrive on the continent, if not the globe and soon the galaxy. MEMPS is short for Mulitple-E-Mail Personality Syndrome. We're all going to have it soon if we do not have it already.

It's impossible and completely unwise to try to survive on the Internet using only one e-mail address. Spam solutions and proposed laws are being tossed around furiously these days but don't think that any of them will be effective in the near future. The best immediate line of defense is to divide up your identity strategically into different e-mail addresses. Ideally these should be e-mail boxes that you can check from the same e-mail client.

Yes, some people say they use their Hotmail or Yahoo account for stuff they never read. But it's hard to sign on to another service and physically check another e-mail box. I think most people never do get to read what's in a mailbox far from their regular e-mail "track."

In Outlook you can create separate accounts with separate login instructions that will check POP3 boxes around the Net. In Eudora Pro these separate accounts are called Personalities.

Whatever software the multiple e-mail user works with to set it up, this system of partitioning your e-mail identity requires discipline. What you're hoping for by succumbing to MEMPS is to eliminate, or at the very least to control the flow of spam into your e-mail box. Because at the heart of the Syndrome is your most private e-mail address that you only give to those with whom you communicate with on the most important level. This e-mail name must never be used on web sites or discussion groups or even on business cards or in print directories. It's the equivalent of an unlisted phone number.

Next you create an e-mail address for things you opt-in for: newsletters, offers, alerts. If you see this address being abused you can turn it off.

You could forward all your addresses into one or two e-mail boxes and when any sign of abuse shows up redirect the abused address to another mailbox or kill it entirely.

But the lesson of MEMPS is certain: even with filters, spaminators and spam cops, the end user will remain vulnerable to spam for a long time to come and is in need of some front line offensive. Streamlining the handling of multiple e-mail boxes has proven to be the most practical solution for me.

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QUIK STATS ON E-MAIL & COMMERCE

84% of Internet users use e-mail, making it the #1 activity on the Internet. 67.3% search for products & services, the #2 activity on the Internet.
NTIA and ESA, U.S. Department of Commerce 2001

92% of grocery shoppers with online access would take advantage of e-mails containing coupons and meal suggestions.
Forrester Research 2002

Nearly 69% of American e-mail users have purchased online after receiving permission-based e-mail marketing.
DoubleClick 2002 study

59% of US consumers have purchased offline as a result of receiving a permission-based e-mail.
DoubleClick 2002 study

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Building a Bigger Search Engine
- Wired News

LookSmart is aiming to topple Google by building a bigger search engine that uses distributed computing. LookSmart has released a screensaver, "Grub," that harnesses the spare computing power of volunteers' machines to index the Web. Wired says the number of people running Grub jumped from less than 100 to more than 1,000 in just a few days, and the system is already crawling more than 26 million web pages. LookSmart believes the "distributed crawl" approach will eventually allow it to index all of the web's estimated 10 billion pages every day. Google crawls about 150 million web pages each day. Some search engine analysts aren't optimistic.(As reported on corante.com 4/17/03)

http://www.corante.com/internet/redir/21205.html

http://www.searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/2177021

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Online Ads Finally Click
- Forbes

Why is online advertising showing new promise? Very low rates and video, says Forbes. "That's the magic formula convincing traditional print and television advertisers to buy online." Widespread broadband adoption, with more than 19 million U.S. households having high-speed Internet access "allows advertisers to use video with confidence, often simply repurposing television creative," says Forbes. Plus, online ad space is cheap - about $5 to reach 1,000 Internet users compared to $31 to reach the same number of households on prime-time TV. (As reported on corante.com 5/27/03

http://www.corante.com/internet/redir/23627.html

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